Suburban taekwondo fight club training future champs
At first glance, Arthur Kopilevich and Jacob Aquino don't look the least bit intimidating.
At 78 pounds, 11-year-old Kopilevich is barely a presence on the taekwondo mat. The taller, 12-year-old Aquino looks to have only a slight advantage at under 100 pounds.
Yet, when they spar, spectators soon begin to realize they are a force be reckoned with.
Kopilevich, a sixth grader at Meridian Middle School in Buffalo Grove, and Aquino, a seventh grader at Our Lady of Perpetual Help School in Glenview, are the youngest gold medal winners of the 2009 U.S. Open Taekwondo Championships held Feb. 12-15 in Las Vegas, Nev.
They each won seven single-elimination fights in their age and weight class placing first out of dozens of athletes from more than 50 countries in the only international taekwondo tournament the U.S. hosts.
Their skills earned them a spot on the Amateur Athletic Union's first Taekwondo National Cadet Team.
Kopilevich and Aquino are among 22 black belt athletes from throughout the country selected by the AAU for special training in Olympic-style sparring. They are the only two students from suburban Chicago to make the team.
"These guys are the rising stars," said Skip Valle of Elk Grove Village, owner/manager of the traveling taekwondo fighting team to which Kopilevich and Aquino belong. "These are the guys you're going to see in 2016 (Olympics). They are the best in the U.S., and probably the best in the world right now."
Valle's Team Force fight club, started in 1998, trains out of World Gym in Palatine, preparing dozens of aspiring black belt athletes for one thing: winning medals.
The adrenaline rush of winning is what keeps kids like Aquino motivated.
"I was always really hyperactive when I was little. My parents put me in taekwondo to calm me down," said Aquino shyly. "I feel (lethal) sometimes when I'm at my 100 percent best."
Valle's daughter, Rikki, was the inspiration for starting the traveling fighting team.
Rikki, who coached Kopilevich and Aquino for the U.S. Open, played basketball, softball and volleyball in school. She said she started learning taekwondo because she got tired of group sports where she had little control over the outcome.
"When I started, there were not many girls fighting," she said. With taekwondo "winning or losing would be on me, and I wouldn't have to rely on anybody else."
After winning her share of medals, 26-year-old Rikki is now one of three coaches for Team Force.
Team members train six days a week year round, traveling state to state from one competition to the next. There are very few fight clubs like it nationwide.
The concept is different from traditional taekwondo schools that emphasize the art of self-defense, teaching students forms, weapons and board breaking more than competitive fighting.
"We fight, period," Valle said. "It's to train kids who want to go to the top, that want to fight at the national level. These are the kids who want to make the U.S. team -s who want to win the Olympics. It takes a certain breed of person who gets pounded every day, six days a week."
Kopilevich, who started learning taekwondo at age 5, is that breed of athlete who has his eye on the prize.
"If the Olympics are going to be in Chicago in 2016, I want to compete and get a gold medal," Kopilevich said. "This is the most elite black belt fighting club, which is why I came here. When I'm on the floor and I knock (my opponent) out, I realize how good my potential is."
• The team's Web site is teamforcetkd.com.
<div class="infoBox"> <h1>More Coverage</h1> <div class="infoBoxContent"> <div class="infoArea"> <h2>Video</h2> <ul class="video"> <li><a href="/multimedia/?category=2&type=video&item=17">The fighters in action </a></li> </ul> </div> </div> </div>