TAEKWONDO: Ben's made of the fight stuff

ANENDRA SINGH
It is seldom in sport that one can see in a boy the promise of a man.
It's not so much that Ben Evans has physical compatibility for taekwondo but, more so, that he is there mentally.
Pound for pound, the Havelock North High School pupil has been punching and kicking well above his age of 16.
Last weekend the sixth-former was crowned grand champion at the International Taekwondo Federation (ITF) two-day national tournament at Turangi.
In collecting three gold medals in the special techniques, sparring and power test categories and a silver in team patterns (a sequence of up-and-down set movements), he eclipsed the efforts of the senior male exponents for the overall title of grand champion.
"Ben's very good at following instructions for his age and not all young people respond to it the way he does," Lin Kaiou, a spokeswoman for the New Zealand Taekwondo Federation coach, Master Rua Kaiou, told SportToday from South Auckland yesterday.
"Even though he is a smaller and lighter person, he has sufficient experience to compete against more experienced and bigger competitors.
"We do have other youngsters but they don't demonstrate Ben's potential. He has a big future because while he's isolated there he's got his own training regime and his performance improves with the right attitude," she said.
The junior national champion and current black belt is isolated in Hawke's Bay and does not have the opportunity to train or compete against adults here, so he travels to Auckland every two months to train with Master Kaiou. His instructor in the Bay is Steve Scrimshaw, of Haumoana.
"I do a seven-hour bus journey each way. I miss school on Friday and return home late on Sunday night," said the sixth-former, explaining that taekwondo teaches people to have balance in life and build their confidence.
"It allows me to do my school work and miss a Friday or two because I have shining reports from my maths, English and other teachers at school to prove it."
How well Evans puts his mental fortitude to use is reflected in his involvement with special needs pupils at Havelock North High. The teenager has been for the past couple of months holding taekwondo classes for eight pupils, whose ages range from 13 to 17 years old. That is part of his PE assessment.
"It teaches them not only to develop their physical co-ordination but also the mental side of things.
"One guy didn't like working with other people at all but after my classes now he loves doing stuff as part of a team. That has pleased a lot of teachers and pupils," said Evans, who believes that the discipline should be co-opted as part of the school curriculum.
Next year Evans' birthday will see him miss the Junior World Championship in Uzbekistan but he is already focusing on the senior men's world championship, in St Petersburg, Russia, in July 2009.
Finding funds has been difficult but Evans hasn't sat around twiddling his thumbs. Next week he will be selling $10 DVDs, showing the benefits from taekwondo to help raise money for his trips. He also thanked Tumu Timbers, who have organised a wood-breaking demonstration at his school in a fortnight.
For someone who loathed training, the Welsh-born Evans, who settled with his family in the Bay almost three years ago, believes the discipline's oath of courtesy - "integrity, perseverance, self-control and indomitable spirit" - can help mould many people's lives.
"It's not aggressive like kicking the crap out of a punching bag but it relies more on approaching things as a way of life," said Evans, who has been involved with the code from the age of eight.