Four members of the Negros Taekwondo Union-Tigers earned slots in the Philippine Team after making the grade in the try-outs of the 2006 National Team Selection at the Philippine Taekwondo Association Central Gym in Manila recently.

The Jimjim Chua-mentored NTU jins who gained spots in the RP Team are former Southeast Asian Taekwondo Union Championships gold medallists Crystal Pauline Reyes and Rubylyn Mapa, Ma. Daphne Alindogan and Jose Emmanuel Enriquez.

The four Tigers standouts were among only 32 jins all over the country that were included in RP Team A, with 16 coming from the seniors category and the other 16 from the juniors division.

Enriquez qualified in the senior men's flyweight class, while Reyes, Alindogan and Mapa obtained slots in the junior women's finweight, flyweight and welterweight categories, respectively. Around 200 national gold and silver medallists got the opportunity to join the national squad try-outs conducted by grandmaster Sung Chon Hong, but only 15 jins each were selected to be members of Teams B and C aside from the 32 standouts in Team A.

The Team A of the RP squad, where the four Tigers jins belong, will get major international exposure this year with the PTA lining up international stints that include the Asian Taekwondo Championships from April 21-23, 2006 in Bangkok, Thailand as well as the ASEAN Taekwondo Championships slated June 8-10 in Vietnam.

Team A will also see action in the World Junior Taekwondo Championships from July 26-30 in Vietnam and the World Cup Taekwondo Championships set Sept. 29 to Oct. 1 in Bangkok, Thailand. The international tournaments are part of the preparations for the Asian Games in Doha, Qatar in December. *CIT

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