FOR UST Lady Jin Jocel Lyn Ninobla, taekwondo never stops.
After bringing home a bronze medal as part of the country’s poomsae team in the last Southeast Asian Games, Ninobla added two more gold medals to her collection after a successful stint in the Chuncheon Open International Taekwondo Championships and the World Taekwondo Hanmadang 2015.
It seems winning medals has been a tradition of the Ninobla household.
Jocel’s father Jojo, who was also a national team player, has been supervising his daughter’s training since she was 4.
“My father is my inspiration. He has always believed in me since I started. I think it’s the hope that he gives that inspires me a lot,” Ninobla told the Varsitarian.
As a five-year-old white belter, Ninobla she bagged a gold medal in her very first competition at the St. Bellarmine Championship. Fourteen years later, she was donning the country’s flag, fighting for international glory the same way her father once did.
But Ninobla’s success did not come easily.
“I once thought of giving up but I guess God made a way for me not to give up so I tried and tried until I succeeded,” she said, referring to the time she did not even make the sparring team in 2012.
Instead of languishing in defeat, Ninobla saw that as an opportunity to make the transition from sparring to poomsae in the same year when her father was invited for the national poomsae team.
“Sinama niya (my father) lang ako doon sa training niya pero I wasn’t looking forward to poomsae. Pero as I trained with his team, nagustuhan ko na siya so nag-continue na ako then [dumating ang opportunities] kaya nag-stop na ako sa sparring because it’s hard to adopt both genres,” she said.
Still, roadblocks continued to challenge Ninobla when she injured her tail bone in practice the following year.
Not only did she move past it, she can afford to joke about the injury now two years later.
“Na-overstretch, pero I think mas naging flexible ako because of that,” she said. John Chester P. Fajardo
