Oxford University TaeKwon-Do School

OUTKD rounded off the academic year again with the amazing BUTL Fest 2025!! 🏖️🌊 The opportunity to train and party alongside highly accomplished members of the Taekwon-Do community like Master Hwang Su-il and Silver Olympic Medallist Lauren Williams was such a privilege.

These were joined by the other fantastic BUTL Fest instructors including Master Barker, Master Vella, Master Auciello and Gina Koutsoupoulou.

We can't thank British University Taekwon-Do League BUTL for organising another exceptional week of training and fun for our members and cannot wait to head back to Spain again next year for BUTL Fest 2026 🥋

The Oxford University Sports Awards 2025 saw OUTKD and individual members shortlisted for six awards! 🏆

We'd like to congratulate our 2024-25 President Eleanor Warrington for winning one of the Contribution to Sport Awards for everything she has done to push the club to our most competitively successful academic year on record amongst many other accomplishments🥇🥈🥉

We would also like to congratulate the 2023-24 President Ben Futcher for winning Teammate of the Year as a result of the support he has given to OUTKD, especially at competitions where he likes to make sure everyone knows when Oxford is winning! 📣📣

For the second year running, OUTKD or specific club members have won the Diversity and Inclusion Award! This award recognises the efforts of many committee members to make the club one of the most inclusive Taekwon-Do and sporting communities around, but particular thanks goes to our 2024-25 Welfare & Inclusion Officer Alice Owen 🐅🐯

Well done also to Matthew Morgan who was shortlisted for the Sporting Moment of the Year for his tremendous 10 medal collection in one weekend. Eleanor Warrington again for being shortlisted for the Sportsperson of the Year and we were very proud to be considered for Club of the Year for the first time ever! 💪🏻

For the second year running OUTKD headed down to Bournemouth Beach to enjoy some training alongside Arts University Bournemouth Taekwondo!! 🏖️ This was a great day had by all with lots of pad work and unlike last year we managed to get some of us into the sea 🌊 It was lovely to see some new faces from AUB and we look forward to hopefully running more beach training sessions in the future!

OUTKD held its annual end of year meal at the Giggling Squid where we celebrated all our accomplishments in 2024-25 and handed out some club awards to those individuals who stood out. Congratulations to everybody who won an award, they were all thoroughly deserved! A special congratulations goes to our incoming 2025-26 President Matthew Morgan for winning the Gary Miller Cup for Outstanding Dedication to OUTKD.

We also recently had a number of our colour belts grade this past term! We’re very pleased to see Gaku, Imogen, Jakub and Jessica all promoted to Yellow Belt (8th Kup) and Caitlin promoted to Green Belt (6th Kup). We look forward to you all continuing your Taekwon-Do journeys with us 💪🏻🥋

At the beginning of June, we were lucky enough to attend the National Student Taekwon-Do Awards, where we picked up two awards! We are enormously proud of our outgoing Men’s Captain and incoming President Matthew Morgan for winning the Male Competitor of the Year Award 🏆🎉 This was thoroughly deserved after collecting 21 medals this past academic year, competing across ITF and WT categories with medals in all seven categories at the BUTL Student Nationals and winning gold in patterns, sparring and destruction the following day at the GTI English Open.

We were also enormously proud to win alongside our friends at Cambridge University Taekwondo the Student Event of the Year Award for our 2025 Varsity Match. Cambridge may have emerged victorious this year, but we could not be more pleased with the steps taken in the past few years to make the Oxbridge Taekwon-Do Varsity Match a more inclusive and high-quality event for both teams. This year saw some truly exceptional fights, with excellent corner judges, officials and friend of both clubs Jonty Yin as referee. As the only ITF-WT hybrid sparring ruleset we know of, the Oxbridge Varsity Match brings together all backgrounds of Taekwon-Do into a single event, like only university Taekwon-Do can. We’re looking forward to many more excellent Varsity Matches in the future with our Cambridge friends! 🔵🟢

Back in May, members of OUTKD, put Taekwon-Do to one side to participate in a self-protection course delivered by the excellent team at Integrity Martial Arts. We covered the basics of “real world” self defence and had the opportunity to practice scenarios of someone verbally and physically attacking us, simulating the pressure and adrenaline experienced during such events. We cannot thank the team of Malcolm, Amanda and Craig for delivering such a brilliant session that was thoroughly enjoyed by all. Special thanks goes to Craig for wearing the body armour and taking our many kicks and fists throughout the session!

A big thank you to Ross Sharman for taking the time to travel down to Oxford back in May to give a seminar to some of the OUTKD students. It was a great 3-hour session that gave us some new drills to develop our sparring skills for the future!

Trinity Term may have been filled with exams, deadlines and coursework, but that didn’t stop us at OUTKD from attending competitions and possibly winning some awards 👀 The first event of the term was the BUTL Secret League which saw 12 of our members head up to Manchester to compete in a league competition against other select university clubs. This was one of the first competition experiences for some of colour belts and despite having some incredibly tough opponents throughout the event, we’re extremely proud of all of our member’s efforts! Thank you to British University Taekwon-Do League BUTL for inviting us to this exclusive event and all the efforts of the referees and umpires.

Today, June 15, we remember General Choi Hong-Hi, the founder of Taekwon-Do, on the 23rd anniversary of his passing.
His legacy lives on through the millions of practitioners around the world who continue to uphold the art and philosophy he created.

We're extremely proud to be shortlisted in six of the Oxford University Sports Awards this year! The second year running we've had shortlistings for Sportsperson of the Year and Diversity & Inclusion, showing both the standard of our athletes and that we're a welcoming and inclusive community for all.

For the first time ever we have shortlistings for Contribution to Sport, Club of the Year and Sporting Moment of the Year! We're so thrilled that the growth and development of the club over the past few years is being recognised.

Join us at Somerville College on the evening of Monday 16th June to find out the winners, where we're sure we'll be walking away with some awards!! 🏆 Get in touch if you want to get yourself a ticket to the awards evening.