Grace Lodhi, right, spars during the AAU Taekwondo Nationals.
Submitted photo
The first week of July was a week of gold medals and USA Team Trials invites for students from Total Taekwondo.
Tatum Downing secured her fourth consecutive national title and made the national AAU Point Sparring team in the 18-to-32-year-old female black belt division. Sisters Grace and Abigail Lodhi earned Team Trials invites for 12-to-14-year-old female black belts in Olympic Sparring.
“It was really exciting,” said Abigail Lodhi, who will be a freshman at Columbus North. “The last two years, I was unable to make it to Team Trials. This is my last year as a cadet, and making it to Team Trials is really awesome.”
Downing, 23, a 2019 Columbus East and 2022 IUPUC graduate, faced a little adversity in her bid to keep her streak of national team appearances. She sustained a concussion in a car accident in April and was sidelined from training for awhile.
“There was a lot of pressure this year since I made the team the past three years,” Downing said. “I was in an accident earlier this year, so I was a little behind in training, so I was a little worried how I would perform. But I figured it out once I got there.”
Downing qualified for the national team with her performance at the AAU Taekwondo Nationals in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
“She was really hurting that day, had a really bad headache and was in a lot of pain,” said Master Robert Kelley, the Total Taekwondo owner. “But she was able to push through and get that team spot again, which was really impressive.”
Harin Choi, who will be a third-grader at Smith Elementary, won gold medals in four of her five 8-9-year-old female black belt events. Choi captured the WT Traditional Forms, ITF Traditional Forms, TSD Traditional Forms and Olympic Sparring and won the silver medal in Open Traditional Forms.
“I felt really good about forms and the fighting and Olympic sparring,” Choi said. “I’ve been trying really hard to get first place in Olympic sparring, so I feel really good about it.”
“That’s really hard to do, especially for somebody who’s only 9 years old,” Kelley added. “It’s her second nationals, first time as a black belt, so it’s really tough.”
Isabel Lodhi, who will be a third-grader at Parkside Elementary, won every round in her Olympic Sparring competition on her way to a gold medal. She point-gapped all of her opponents in the first two rounds.
“I thought that I did really good because I did what Master Kelley told me to do,” she said.
Grace Lodhi, who will be an eighth-grader at Northside Middle School, will join Abigail at next week’s AAU Team Trials in Greensboro, North Carolina.
After competing in the AAU Taekwondo Nationals in Florida, Grace Lodhi flew to Fort Worth, Texas, to compete in the USA Taekwondo Nationals. She won the national title and secured a USA Taekwondo Team Trails invite.
“It meant a lot to me because I’ve been working this whole past year to make it to team trials,” she said. “So to win USAT and to qualify for AAU Team Trials was really great for me, and I’m really happy that I got to go to Team Trials. This year, my competitors were much harder than last year, and I think I had a really big performance jump over the past two years. I think I’m much better this year than I was last year.”
So far this season, Grace Lodhi has won gold at the AAU state tournaments in Ohio, Michigan and Indiana, along with the Canada Taekwondo Open, World Taekwondo Open, USA Taekwondo East Coast Regional and American Taekwondo United (ATU) Nationals. Those came prior to the AAU and USAT Team Trial invites earlier this month.
“Grace is just phenomenal,” Kelley said. “To go and weigh in for AAU on Thursday, to compete on Friday, to fly out on Saturday from Florida to Texas, to weigh in Saturday afternoon in Texas and then compete the next day is just an incredible feat. Then to win at USA Taekwondo Nationals, that’s the highest level you can compete in.”
“It was kind of stressful, but not that much because we did it last year, too,” Grace added. “But we had a two-day break between weigh-ins, and when we landed in Dallas from Fort Lauderdale, I only had maybe a day to go to the weigh-in and get my weight in check. So that was kind of a struggle, but I made it, and my work paid off, so I was really glad.”
