Reader submitted: Portales' Brown wins taekwon-do gold medal

Eastern New Mexico Taekwon-Do competed at the world level for the third time.

Audra Brown, Joshua Bullard, Keane Brown, Marv Lutnesky, all of Portales, and Joshua Tredway of Texico all competed in Cheongju, South Korea in the Taekwon-Do World Championships held every other year.

This is the equivalent of the Olympics in our style of Taekwon-Do.

All five of these black belts are students of Master Steve Blakeley. Blakeley was selected as the USA World Team head coach and was responsible for the 12 team coaches and all 77 of the U.S. black belt competitors.

The event was held July 4-9 with 660 competitors from 58 countries competing for gold, silver, and bronze medals.

The competition included individual pattern, sparring, power breaking and specialty breaking and each country also competed in the same four events as a team.

Brown returned with one gold medal in power breaking and is considered the world champion in this event and then lead the USA Women's Team to another gold medal in the same event.

Tredway earned a bronze medal in sparring with the USA Junior Men's team.

This was the first time Eastern New Mexico Taekwon-Do had students selected to compete on one of the 21-person prestigious USA World Teams.

Brown earned a spot on the women's team and Mr. Tredway earned a spot on the junior mens team.

This was Tredway's first time to compete at the world level.

Bullard, Keane Brown and Lutnesky did not place in the medals but represented the USA well.