New Haven Register (New Haven, CT)
‘I have to work hard for it’
Amity High School freshman turns hard work into gold medals at national taekwondo competitions
NEW HAVEN — Standing with her feet spread on the floor mat inside a local taekwondo studio this week, Haley Han exploded her left leg upward, extending it to a near 180-degree angle.
The move, called a vertical side kick, has taken the Amity Regional High School freshman nearly her entire life to master. She performed the kick alongside two other teammates at last month’s U.S. Team Trial event in Tulsa, Okla., propelling the trio to a gold medal in the girls’ junior division and qualifying them to be part of the United States Poomsae National Team.
At the 2023 U.S. Open Taekwondo Championships in Las Vegas earlier this month,
Han’s crew showcased the kick again en route to another first-place finish.
Far from resting on her laurels, Han, already a thirddegree black belt, insisted that she is still trying to improve her technique, underscoring the determination and relentlessness she has displayed throughout a decorated, more than decade-long martial arts career.
“I’m still trying to make (that kick) better,” Han said, holding a certificate of achievement and the two, red white and blue-colored medals she recently won. “I just train a lot — you have to have a lot of strength and muscle. It takes a long time to make it good.”
At three-and-a-half years old, Haley Han, now 15, learned how to punch and kick in the taekwondo studio of her father, KyeongSeob
Han, a Sahyun, or “master,” of the Korean martial arts form. KyeongSeob Han said he brought his daughter to his Branford studio twice a week, teaching her basic skills and watching as she carefully mimicked his movements. Even for the child of a taekwondo master, Haley Han was a quick learner.
“She’s my daughter, but I’m very impressed by her because I have a lot of experience teaching taekwondo, and she was very good,” KyeongSeob Han said. “She paid attention, especially for movement. I would teach something and she just copied me exactly.”
“I think she has some potential in taekwondo,” the master recalled thinking during those initial lessons with his daughter.
At first, KyeongSeob Han said, he was hesitant to bring his little girl to the studio, worried that being “Master Han’s daughter” would bring undue expectations and scrutiny from other parents. However, Haley Han proved to her
father that she could handle the pressure while becoming a role model for her classmates. Kyeong Seob Han would sometimes ask Haley to demonstrate moves for other students in the class, further toughening her resolve. “I'd try to make sure I don't lose balance if I perform in front of them,” she said with a smile.
Due to the long distance from her father's studio to her Bethany home, Han began training at World Champion Taekwondo in Fairfield and New Haven, where she is a member of that studio's competition team specializing in the poomsae discipline – one of the sport's many forms.
Han's instructors said that one of her best qualities as a taekwondo practitioner is her unfailing commitment to consistency and hard work. Since joining WCT's competition team about five years ago, Han said, she spends about 10 hours a week working on her craft and attending Amity High School in Woodbridge, where she is an A student. Han trains every weekday, only taking off Sundays and every other Saturday to rest.
“When I teach taekwondo to students, a lot of kids are up and down,” KyeongSeob Han said. “Sometimes they just lose interest and sometimes they lose focus. But Haley was constantly (giving) effort. Whatever masters and other coaches give her, she's going to keep trying her best to complete that.”
Although she appears gentle and quiet on the surface, Han said she transforms into a fierce competitor when she steps onto the mat, often sporting a determined look.
But, according to another WCT instructor, she can also turn into a social butterfly during her poomsae class, animatedly chatting with peers she has grown close with.
Social skills are among the many intangible assets that Han said she has developed from taekwondo. The sport has also greatly boosted her confidence and self-esteem, helping her overcome fears such as standing in front of her Amity classmates and presenting a project.
“When you compete, you do it in front of a lot of people, and it helps you not get as nervous when you do things,” Han said. “I used to be very nervous (presenting in school), but now my confidence got better, and I'm not as scared anymore.”
Teaching taekwondo to students goes beyond the basics of learning how to kick and punch, according to Han's teachers. “I'm trying to teach her about selfcontrol, and focus, and the build-up of self-esteem and confidence,” KyeongSeob Han said. “She gets a lot of good things from taekwondo training, not just self-defense.”
Han's parents, who immigrated to the U.S. from Korea, said they were determined to teach their daughter how to speak their native language when she was young, not wanting her to lose a piece of her identity even though she was born in America. The patience and focus that KyeongSeob Han said his daughter picked up from taekwondo proved useful as she learned to speak both languages fluently.
Physical abilities have also resulted from her decade of martial arts training. Performing the vertical sidekick requires incredible lower-body strength flexibility, she said, and stretching has become a part of her daily routine.
The coordination and balance she has honed through martial arts have benefited her skills as a recreational dancer — a hobby she said enjoys doing around the house with her younger sister, Kayla Han. Haley Han said she prefers dancing to “anything upbeat,” especially Korean popular music, or K-pop, of which her favorite group is NewJeans.
According to her parents, Han possesses the rare ability to gracefully imitate a dance routine after only seeing it performed once or twice, similar to how she mirrored her father's movements as a young student of taekwondo. “When she has extra time, she watches the K-pop dance, and she can copy it easily,” KyeongSeob Han said.
“She's really good when she dances,” Eunjung Dong, Haley's mother, added.
Han's passion for dancing nearly won her a competition of a much different kind in 2020 when Dong submitted videos of her then-12-year-old daughter to JYP Entertainment, a top South Korean entertainment and record label. Dong's cell phone contains many videos of Han dancing to Kpop songs on a hardwood floor in a room of their Bethany home. Recognizing her daughter's talent, Dong said she decided to submit the videos to JYP, which then contacted the family asking Han to travel to South Korea for an audition to become the country's next K-pop star.
The dance tryouts were “very nerve-racking,” Han said. But the martial artist said that the confidence she has gained from taekwondo helped calm her down and let her creativity flourish. She advanced several rounds in the audition process but ultimately came up just short of being chosen as the next K-pop sensation. Still, she called the trip a valuable experience.
“Not everyone has that opportunity in their life, so it was really special,” Dong said.
Han said she is unsure of following in her father's footsteps and becoming a taekwondo master. She said she has other interests that she might want to pursue, such as swimming, gymnastics, or joining Amity's dance club or cheerleading squad.
For now, though, she said she is focused on training and refining her form ahead of her next competition at the Pan Am Games in the Dominican Republic next month, where she will compete as a representative for Team USA. If she wins gold again, she will achieve her goal of qualifying for the World Poomsae Championships in Hong Kong next year.
“When I train, I have to make sure I don't give up,” Han said. “Some days, I would be tired and I would not want to go to training. But I always think I have to go because my next competition is coming, and I have to work hard for it.”