After Recent Loss of Father, Local Girl Makes National Taekwondo Team

This time of year, many 18-year-old girls are focused on preparing for college finals or applying for summer jobs. For Shaina Krause, however, that is not quite the case.

With emotions running high from the recent death of her father, Krause traveled to the University of California at Davis April 10 to compete in the 2011 National Collegiate Taekwondo Association Championships. During double-elimination trials, she beat out all her opponents in the featherweight black belt category—a division with representatives from all 50 states—and won a place on the 16-member National Collegiate Team.

By securing her spot on the team, Krause will travel to Shenzhen, China this August to compete at the World University Games.

“It was amazing—hard to describe the feeling really,” Krause said. “It’s a really big thing to get to go to China.”

The win came on the heels of Krause’s recent and tragic loss of her father, Paul Krause, who died in last month.

“When her anxiety attacks would occur, I’d be there to cheer her up,” said Master Q.V. Phan Le, Krause’s coach and motivator throughout her matches at the championship. “I know her father would want her to live her life.”

Krause’s accomplishments go well beyond her performance at this year’s  championships. Her path to success began over a decade ago when she began as a student of Master Phan Le at the Phan University of Martial Arts (P.U.M.A) in Burke.

Le founded the Phan University of Martial Arts in 2001 and has been teaching in the area for 15 years. His school offers classes in taekwondo, judo, ju-jitsu, Muay Thai kickboxing, hapkido, taiho jutsu, aiki-ju jutsu, CPR and rape prevention.

“My two older sisters started before me and I would watch them all the time,” Krause said. “That really sparked my interest.”

Over the past year, Krause competed in the 2011 World Taekwondo Championship Team Trials, the 2011 Pan American Games Team Trials and the 2012 Olympic Team Trials. Taekwondo, which became an official medal Olympic sport in 2000, is the “number one growing sport in the world,” said Le.

Krause is only the second female in the D.C. Metropolitan area to make the Olympic trials for taekwondo. (Her older sister, Cheryl, was the first).

Other highlights of Krause’s successes in taekwondo include being a member of the 2009 American Athletic Union (AUU) Senior National Team and taking first place in the featherweight black belt category at the 2008 USAT Junior Olympic Championships.

Today, Krause is the “star female athlete” of the Phan University of Martial Arts, according to Master Phan Le. “She’s really disciplined,” adds Le. “There’s a part of her that won’t give up and she knows how much her body can take. You don’t see that with a lot of athletes.”

Now a freshman at George Mason University, Krause is learning how to balance school with her training. Whereas in high school she would train almost daily, she now goes into the studio a couple times a week, mostly on weekends.

While her new schedule is “difficult to adjust to,” she said, “There are so many opportunities given [through taekwondo] for people to be successful. I get a lot of opportunities to travel and compete against people from all over the world.”