Marlborough, MASS –
Colorado’s collegiate Taekwondo teams threw down with other student athletes from dozens of schools on Saturday, at the 2025 National Collegiate Taekwondo Championships hosted at the Royal Plaza Trade Center in Marlborough, MA.
The University of Colorado, Denver University, and University of Northern Colorado teams competed in sparring competitions at all belt levels.
CU seniors Allyson Ayers and India SarahRose Rockey won third place in women’s featherweight.
Ayers dominated her first match. She mercilessly clocked her opponent with a series of front leg attacks and head shots to win the first round 18-8. She’d keep her opponent off the board in the second round to win 3-0.
Ayers went on to give another impressive performance in the semi finals against her longtime rival Lauren Harrington from the University of Portland. Ayers took silver for sparring in the 2024 championships, where she beat Harrington.
But, in the second round, with just 21 seconds left on the clock, Harrington was up 3-0. That’s when Ayers swiped her with an outside to inside crescent kick to the head to even the score. Alas, Harrington scored a punch to take the round.
This is Ayers’s last year with the CU team, she said while she was disappointed she couldn’t knock Harrington off like last year, she was happy with her performance. “Honestly, I might continue coming to NCTA after I graduate,” Ayers said.
In the color belt crowd, CU’s Jasper Shen and Brendan Connors faced off in the finals for men’s light/welterweight sparring. The two fought viciously against their opponents to make it to the top,and impressed the crowd with their fighting skills.
The two sized each other up in the first round, before engaging in a series of knee checks and blocked kicks. Connors and Shen exchanged head shots to even the score at six halfway through the first round. A penalty call on Connors ultimately ended with Shen taking the W.
“I was just kind of trying to find openings… it was just in the heat of the moment, I’m just trying to see what would work,” Shen told Colorado MA News.
In round two, Connors scored two head shots, including one that caused Shen to stumble and fall, and got a penalty from Shen to take a 7-0 lead. One body shot by Shen and a punch from Connors later, Connors took round two 8-2.
“I had to completely change what I was doing in the second round,” Connors said.
During round three, Shen took an early lead over Connors with a crescent kick to the back of the helmet and scored two points off him due to penalties.
Shen would continue to lead Connors over the next minute and a half, scoring a series of head shots that would give him a 13-7 lead. “With like 30-40 seconds left, I was like ‘I’ve got some ground to make up’”, and that he did.
Connors quickly retaliated with a barrage of body kicks that would bring the score 14-12, he got four penalties in total for the match to bring Shen’s lead up just slightly.
With just seconds left on the clock, Connors’ coach, Luiz Nuñez, challenged what looked like a kick to the back of Shen’s head, but that was rejected by the refs, handing Shen the gold medal, final score: 16-13.
CU green belt Gavin Hermann scored a bronze medal in the bantam/feather weight category. He fought three people in a division of 14 to take third place, after three fights.
“I believe I put forth 110%…” Hermann said, “I got more head shots than I had anticipated, those tend to be my weaker side, so getting in all of those head shots was a really big thing for me.”
In women’s color belt fighting, Bhavana Chauhan took silver in the blue belt feather weight category.
In the semi finals, Chauhaun came out of the gate swinging in the first round, with a cut kick that turned into a clinch. But the opponent in blue held her ground, before scoring her own cut kick to the head. Chauhan answered with a head shot of her own. The first round ended in a draw – but the judges ruled in favor of Chauhan’s opponent, for the number of kicks she got, effectively handing her the round.
Round 2 started off with another aggressive cut kick that played out just like the first round, the two athletes exchanging cut after cut while patiently feeling each other out. But blue got on the board with a punch. After a few exchanges, Chauhan couldn’t cash in and ended up losing.
While the disappointment of losing the gold medal was tough, she remained a good sport.
“She was just a good opponent,” Chauhan said. “Well she got a few points in… and the first three fights kind of took it out of me. That’s no excuse, but she was a good opponent.”
University of Denver also had four competitors place in sparring. According to Denver head coach Sean Jung, Charlie Khunosombat, a black belt, got third place in the men’s fin weight category. He also said Tawnia Ayala Ramos and Lauren Tapper, both green belts, also got third place in their respective divisions. And one yellow belt, Trajan Rehder, also placed third in the light/bantam category.
Perhaps the less exciting but more heartwarming part of today’s story was the University of Northern Colorado’s club, a team that’s more a duo than anything.
The two UNC athletes made their way to Massachusetts to compete in this year’s events.
UNC senior Alexander Hunter fought proudly in the black belt featherweight division.
In his second round, Hunter scored two headshots for a 6-2 lead, before his opponent struck back with a spinning hook kick to the head.
He put up a fierce struggle in the end, but the bear’s foe managed to land a roundhouse kick to the head, ending the round 12-9 and thus the fight.
Holly Ackerman, a blue belt and senior at UNC, also competed this weekend in breaking and sparring.
She told Colorado MA News that she was grateful for the CU team coaching Hunter and herself in the sparring components, and was just grateful for the community assistance.
Ackerman told us that while she didn’t do as well as she would have liked to, she was just happy to be a part of the events and had fun doing it.
On Sunday, athletes will compete in the 3v3 competitions, we’ll have more on Sunday night.
Jesse Hughes is the Editor-in-Chief of ColoradoMANews.com
He can be reached at his email: jchughes93@gmail.com