Lee-Davis senior Alexa Oswald has been getting her kicks in style this summer. Over the past five months, Oswald has been pounding a path to success in the world of Tae Kwon Do which could lead to world class achievements.

  In April, Oswald took the Virginia State Tae Kwon Do title in the 14-17 age group. At the Maryland State TKD Association East Coast Open in May, she claimed a close second. Then on July 16 she won her division of the prestigious Yong-In Presidential Cup International TKD event in Greensboro, NC. With the International title, Oswald also earned the opportunity to train for 10 days at the Yong-In TKD University in South Korea sometime in the near future.

  But Yong-In would not be the first prestigious school Oswald has attended. In June she spent four days working on her Tae Kwon Do skills at he Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, Co. For Oswald, it was a very memorable experience. “They didn’t necessarily give feedback about where you were, but they treated us all like Olympians,” she said. “It was really cool.”

  Oswald first picked up the sport as a youngster at American Family Fitness and has been training under 4th degree black belt Craig Simpson at Mechanicsville’s Tae Kwon Do Works for the past eight years.

  Tae Kwon Do varies from Karate with an emphasis on kicks. “Tae Kwon Do is hard to beat for the art, the beauty and just the shear athleticism that it has,” Simpson said.

  To Simpson, Oswald is a unique competitor. “She hates me saying this but she’s a once in a decade athlete,” he said.

  At Tae Kwon Do Works, Simpson immediately recognized potential in Oswald when she traveled to an event as a 10-year-old. “It was a tournament that was supposed to probably been done at six o’clock and she was supposed to be the last match of the night at 10 o’clock,” he said. “Alexa had to sit down in the ring and wait for it and she never moved. She sat there and sat there and the rest of the kids were bouncing around and Alexa never moved. I said ‘This girl’s got the mental capacity to do this’.”

  That solid mental capacity allowed Oswald to earn her black belt at age 14.

  Alexa, the younger sister of Confederate soccer standout Ashley Oswald, decided to diverge from the family sport. “I came from a soccer family and I always did soccer when I was really little, as I was growing up too while I was doing Tae Kwon Do,” Alexa said. “I think I just wanted to do something different and it looked cool.”

  Oswald trains an hour to an hour and a half, four to five days a week. Her vigorous warm-up routine includes paddle drills, crescent kicks, speed drills on an agility ladder and box jumps- a draining workout before she even suits up to spar.

  “It gets your blood pumping,” she said. “I feel like I really need to be warmed up before I’m ready to go 100 percent.”

  Speed is one of Oswald’s greatest assets. “She’s very fast,” Simpson said. “She has very fast twitch muscles. She can really move very quickly and she’s able to generate a lot of power for her size. That’s what makes her a tough opponent.”

  Oswald has also proven to be equally efficient when it comes to school work. The honor role student holds a 4.2 GPA while taking Advanced Placement classes, working to get her IB certificate in Spanish, participates in SODA and DECA and is the co-president of the senior class council all while maintaining her Tae Kwon Do schedule.

  At Lee-Davis, Oswald said a lot of people are taken by surprise when they learn she is involved in the sport. “A lot of people just kind of giggle because I’m small and it’s kind if funny,” she said.

  However one reaction remains consistent. “Every time I say I do Tae Kwon Do, the first thing out of their mouths is, ‘Show me some moves’,” she laughed. “I’m like well, when somebody does track, you don’t ask them to run a lap.”

  Oswald hopes that her training in the sport will eventually carrier her to the Olympics, which Simpson said is not out of the realm of possibilities.

  “It’s a long hard road to the Olympics but I’m not willing to say we couldn’t do it,” Simpson said.

  Having stepped up every year, Oswald’s current goal is to reach Nationals in 2012.