Aubryn Kaine

Taekwondo is an enduring presence in Aubryn Kaine 20’s life, an activity to which she has been dedicated for over 12 years.

“I started when I was four and a half years old at Master Chol Choe’s Black Belt Academy,” Kaine said. “I am a third-degree black belt. I got that when I was nine years old.”

Kaine’s journey with taekwondo has involved multiple stages of learning, practice, and refinement.

“A lot of it was figuring out how to move my body to be able to copy what I was seeing someone else do,” Kaine said. “Once I stopped being able to learn anything new, then it became more about, ‘How can I help someone else learn what I know?’”

The skills Kaine gained at learning don’t just benefit her in the dojo, however.

“The stuff that we do at school–the patterns that I learned taekwondo in, the patterns that I learn academics in–it’s easier to focus in school when I do taekwondo,” she said.

“[Taekwondo]’s what started me in athletics, which makes me so I don’t get as irritated.”
Much of the knowledge Kaine has learned from taekwondo comes from the martial art’s dedication to core morals.

“The tenets of taekwondo are courtesy, integrity, perseverance, self-control, and indomitable spirit, and I memorized those before I was five. Those are like life skills of, ‘This is how I want to be in the world,’” Kaine said. “It also means that I never…was afraid of other people, because I always knew that if something got too far, I could protect myself.”

Despite her many years of experience, Kaine still has more she wants to achieve in her taekwondo career.

“There’s a limit to getting my fourth-degree black belt: I have to be 20 years old. You can teach once you’re 20. I would have gotten my fourth-degree black belt when I was 15, but I was too young, so I’m still waiting,” Kaine said. “I’m definitely planning on getting my fourth done sometime during college; I’m thinking to teach in some way.”

The enthusiasm for taekwondo that drives Kaine to teach comes from her belief in taekwondo’s merits.

“I think that it’s a really good experience for everyone, and especially with some of the stuff with Mollie Tibbetts–needing to protect yourself, learning how to do it, and having that be a basic part of who you are, has been really, really good for me, and I think it teaches some skills that I see a lot of people don’t have,” she said. “It makes it a lot harder to go through life if you don’t have these central core values.”

Kaine also said that there are many reasons to practice and love taekwondo, ranging from competition to self-improvement.

“People do…it as a sport, especially sparring, which is what the Olympics are. That’s really competitive and it’s pretty similar to football, just with individuals,” Kaine said. “However, there is another aspect of taekwondo that I like more: doing it as a part of your life, so it’s less of a competition. It’s more than a sport.”