Kamiak sophomore hopes to qualify for U.S. taekwondo team

LYNNWOOD — As a young boy, Bilal Hasan of Mukilteo loved watching “The Power Rangers” on television. Indeed, he loved them so much that he would dress up like the characters and then stand in front of the TV, imitating their martial arts fighting moves.

“I decided if he wanted to do the real thing, he might as well,” said his mother, Rika Hasan.

Soon enough, the youngster was enrolled in beginning taekwondo. And over the years Bilal Hasan has progressed from being a superhero wannabe to one of the nation’s top up-and-coming taekwondo athletes, representing the United States last month at the World Taekwondo Junior Championships in Burnaby, British Columbia.

The 15-year-old sophomore at Mukilteo’s Kamiak High School competed in the under-45 kilogram weight class (under 99 pounds) against 43 other competitors from around the world. He won his opening match against an athlete from Israel, but then lost in the second round to a fighter from Russia. That Russian fighter ended up losing to the athlete from South Korea who won the gold medal in the division.

Though the outcome against the Russian fighter “was real disappointing,” Hasan said, the experience should be an important stepping stone in his quest to be a U.S. Olympian someday — perhaps as soon as 2020.

His coach, Joe Whitworth of Lynnwood’s Northwest Black Belt Academy, said Hasan’s Olympic goal “is very do-able. … He’s a good athlete and he has the potential, but to be honest there are a lot of kids around the world who are just as good as he is. Even in this country there are kids who are just as good as he is. But the difference is how (hard) he works.

“The best part about him,” Whitworth said, “is that he is very coachable. He’s very smart and very athletic, and he has a willingness to learn new things and not be afraid of them. Athletes have a comfort zone and when things get hard, they go back to what they’re used to. … But he studies a lot and he’s very coachable, and that’s what makes him different.”

Hasan was still a pre-schooler when he started taekwondo, and he went to nationals when he was 10 even though, he admitted, “I wasn’t that good. I didn’t know how to kick and I didn’t know how to win a match, so I’d just throw any (kind of move). When I started going to tournaments, I was getting destroyed.”

Determined to improve, he committed himself to training and to learning the finer points of his sport. He earned a black belt when he was 11 (he is today a third-degree black belt), and last year he placed second at nationals before going on to compete at the Pan American Junior Championships in Aguascalientes, Mexico, where he received a bronze medal.

In August of this year Hasan again placed second at nationals, after which he was invited to the U.S. team trials in Colorado Springs, Colorado, where he faced other top finishers from nationals in his weight class. He ended up winning the team trials to earn a spot on the U.S. team that competed at the recent world championships in Burnaby.

The event in Canada “was the best of the best, (all of them) representing their countries,” said Zamal Hasan, his father. “The experience is like a junior Olympics, and those (athletes) are all candidates to be in the Olympics when they are over 18 years old,” which is the Olympic minimum in taekwondo.

Though the recent outcome in Canada was disappointing, the experience “has given him an understanding that he belongs on the world stage,” Whitworth said. Many of the other athletes, he went on, “have tons more international experience than he does. But for him, knowing he belongs with those guys, I think the experience he had at the world championships is going to help him tremendously the next time.

“I know he’s taking it a little hard because it’s the world championships, but I don’t think he should have any shame in what he accomplished. They’re all just quality opponents, and he’s right up there with any of those guys. And he understands that if he gets another chance, he’ll do very well.”