A lot of students graduate high school with a list of accomplishments already under their belts, but few can call themselves world champions before they receive their diplomas.
But that’s the height Pickerington High School North senior Alexis Olenik has already reached.
It has been four years since Olenik started practicing taekwondo, and to date, she has already won 15 state champion titles, two district titles and one world title in American Taekwondo Association (ATA) tournaments.
To achieve what Olenik has accomplished in the last few years requires discipline and dedication. She has cultivated both throughout high school, attending daily taekwondo lessons, participating in after-school activities and managing her time to maintain a balance between in-school and out-of-school commitments.
Of all the different sports in which Olenik could have invested herself, taekwondo most captivated her interest because it helped her grow as a person, mentally and physically.
“You get to meet so many new people, and they’re so different, but you have one thing in common, and that’s taekwondo,” Olenik says. “Taekwondo is about the relationship. It’s not something that you can just be good at because there are so many different things that come into it. There’s always something that you have to work on or else you’re never going to be perfect at it.”
Olenik believes “there is always room to grow,” she says, and one of her instructors at Pickerington ATA Black Belt Academy, Jasmine Cloe – a world champion herself – attests to Olenik’s mindset and dedication to taekwondo.
“If we tell her she has a really good form, and what we would do to make it better is to work on stances and to try to work on the proper technique of a kick and executing it or snapping it, what she does is she takes it into heart and practices it,” Cloe says. “When she comes back and she shows us, you can tell that she’s made an effort to change it.”
In 2013 alone, Olenik competed in the ATA Spring Nationals in Las Vegas and the ATA Taekwondo Fall Nationals in Orlando, Fla., along with 11 other regional tournaments. Points are awarded when a participant wins a tournament, and competitors from all over the world contest to collect points during the season. Participants who have accumulated a certain number of points by the end of the season are eligible to participate in the World Championship Tournament.
Olenik was four months into her taekwondo training, five days a week, when she took part in her first taekwondo tournament. She recalls it as being a nerve-wracking experience.
“I was really nervous, and I was hyperventilating,” Olenik says. “I broke out in hives, which was really scary, but I persevered through it and I ended up getting two first places that day, so I was pretty happy.”
Olenik’s first hands-on exposure to taekwondo came when she was 13 and instructors from the Pickerington ATA Black Belt Academy conducted an introductory course during her gym class. While it wasn’t the first time Olenik had taken an interest in the sport, the gym class session set Olenik on the road to the world championship.
A quote by t
he late Erma Bombeck, humorist and author, continues to inspire Olenik every day to strive to be the best she can be: “When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say, ‘I used everything you gave me.’”
“Along with that, I really look up to the people I work with, especially the female instructors,” Olenik says. “They’re just really good role models.”
After school, Olenik is a part-time instructor with a Level 2 certification at the academy. She trains three days a week and is working on becoming a two-time world champion. She is also a part of a show choir at North.
Olenik may not have any definite plans for college yet, but she intends to complete Level 3 of the taekwondo instructor certification program after she turns 18 on Aug. 19. She also hopes to establish her own taekwondo school one day.
Nen Lin Soo is a contributing writer. Feedback welcome at gbishop@cityscenemediagroup.com.
