By Hilary Monaco

ECTC Tournament Committee Member

May 3 (New York, NY) - On Sunday, February 28th, ECTC athletes competed at Princeton University for the fourth tournament of the season. This tournament was the largest tournament in league history with 445 competitors from 29 schools. Special thanks to our farthest traveling schools, Virginia Tech and the University of Michigan. Thanks for making the trip!

With every new tournament each school starts the day with the poomsae competition. Poomsae continues to get increasingly competitive in the league across all ranks. Shorter descriptions since all medalist info posted on the side! After the poomsae competition, MIT led the tournament with 148 points, Cornell was in second place with 120 points and Northeastern University was in third with 55 points.

Sparring competition description will be SHORTER. Finally, Women’s A-team [Black and red belt competitors] gold went to Rutgers Women’s A1 (Meghna Jain, Nathalie Peck and Julia Kong), winning over American University Women’s A1 (Janny Jang and Diane Kim); Men’s A-team gold went to Duke Men’s A1 (Brendan Ryu, Brian Pegno and Eric Mastrolonardo), who fought Penn State Men’s A1 (Joshua Roemer, Joshua Bartlett and Michael Clupper) in the finals.

Special note should be taken of the to the two-person teams who made it to finals in Women’s A-team sparring (American University A1) and Men’s B-team sparring (MIT B1), a very difficult feat in Sunday’s strong brackets. Given the three-person-team sparring format in the ECTC, a team must win two of a possible three fights to advance. For these two-person teams to advance over a three man team, they must win both fights. So for these two-person teams to make it to the finals is a significant accomplishment.

After a full, efficient day of competition the final tournament standings are as follows: Third place - West Point (248 points), Second place - MIT (272 points), First place - Cornell (336 points).

Check out the league standings here!