Nineteen members of Lawrence’s Prime Martial Arts competed in the 2015 Songahm Taekwondo World Championships in July in Little Rock, Arkansas, and three of them returned with gold medals.

The PMA trio of Jacob Thompson, Fe Brinkley and Katie Becklin combined for five world championships, but they all persevered through different struggles to their respective titles.

Thompson takes after family members

PMA owner Jimmy Golden pushes his students out of their comfort zones in order to reach new heights, but Thompson is one martial artist he expects a little bit more out of. Thompson won world championships in the 13-14-year-old first-degree forms and weapons divisions, and is the nephew of Golden, who won world titles himself in 2006 and 2007.

“Mr. Golden ever since I was a little kid wanted me to be a world champion,” Thompson said. “It’s been rough the past tournament season because he’s always been pushing me. He’s made me cry and he’s made me sweat, but it just all paid off in the end.”

Thompson, an eighth-grader at Southwest Middle School, has a number of close friends who also compete in taekwondo. As excited as he was to win a world title, he hopes that his friends will achieve the same feat someday so they can experience the same feeling he did.

“We got together and we trained everyday for six days a week and we trained for about three hours everyday pushing ourselves and it was all worth it in the end, though, for me,” Thompson said. “They’re going for it again next year and hopefully they’ll get it.”

Between training and competing in tournaments year-round, the 13-year-old Thompson already has experienced some of the major challenges of being a student-athlete.

“The hardest part is school because every time I went to a tournament, I would miss a day or two of school and would have to make up homework down at that tournament,” Thompson said. “I made it on the honor roll still and I missed so many days of school.”

While Thompson is following in Golden’s footsteps, he has also inspired some of his other family members to take up taekwondo.

“It’s really cool because I get to see my brother (Justin), he is about to get his black belt soon, and my sister (Makayla), she’s an orange belt. It’s amazing,” Thompson said. “My mom (Michelle), she’s coming back to try and get her black belt because she stopped when she was a kid. It’s just really cool.”

One of the most rewarding aspects of taekwondo for Thompson has been bringing his family closer together, so experiencing his world title with Golden on hand was very special for him.

“The feeling after I won and giving my uncle a hug after I won was pretty amazing,” Thompson said. “All of the hard work paid off.”

Sparring title special for Brinkley

While Thompson picked up his first two world titles this year, Brinkley is no stranger to winning in taekwondo’s top tournament. Brinkley won world championships in forms in 2006 and 2007 and weapons in 2013 and 2014, but she had fallen just short of gold in her favorite event until this summer.

For four consecutive years, Brinkley finished as the runner-up in her division of the world championship in sparring, but she claimed gold this year in the 18-29-year-old fourth- and fifth-degree competition.

“This one in particular is very special to me because for the longest time, I’ve always wanted the sparring world championship title,” Brinkley said. “That’s the one I’ve wanted from the get-go. It’s my favorite division to compete in because you have your forms competition, you have your weapons competition and sparring is like a chess game.”

Brinkley, 25, has been doing martial arts since she was in the third grade. As a head instructor at Prime Martial Arts, she has been able to make a living out of the sport she loves.

“It’s something that I love,” Brinkley said. “I’m just very fortunate and grateful to have something that I love going to everyday. There are some people who don’t have that. I’m very thankful to have a job that I love.”

Brinkley moved to Lawrence in 2004 and graduated from Free State High in 2008. She then headed to Johnson County Community College, but eventually returned to Lawrence to work under Golden at PMA. Helping keep Lawrence safe has been one of the things that Brinkley has enjoyed most about teaching and competing in taekwondo.

“Since we live in a college town, we definitely go to all of the sororities and help them. We just go out to the community to help them learn how to defend themselves,” Brinkley said. “We teach seminars absolutely free because we want to make sure our community is being safe. We do these free demonstrations for everyone just to make sure something so little that could change or save a life one day. We want to spread the word on that, and we love doing that for our community.”

Along with helping others in the community, Brinkley attested that PMA has become a community within itself and is like a family to her. Brinkley said that she would not be a five-time world champion or have accomplished what she has in taekwondo without the help of Golden or her other students and co-workers at PMA.

“Jimmy Golden, he knows when to push us to the limit, but the way that he coaches us is phenomenal. You can see our banners right here. He has created so many world titles,” Brinkley said. “He’s so passionate and he believes in his students that they can achieve something, but at the same time, he will give you tough love. But at the end, he will give you that satisfaction of, ‘was it all worth it?’ We always say, ‘yes, it was.'”

Not letting go of taekwondo

Martial arts have been a passion of Becklin’s since she was in high school, but time constraints with college kept her from training her way to be a champion.

Now that Becklin has settled in Lawrence as a postdoctoral fellow at KU in the ecology and evolutionary biology departments, she has made it a point to again fit taekwondo as a main activity in her free time.

“With stuff going on in college, I really couldn’t keep up with the training. So I took time off from probably about 2002 until I started again just recently, so it had been about 10 years,” Becklin said. “The style that I did before, it was an independent school so they had kind of a mixture of different styles and it wasn’t the same as ATA’s (American Taekwondo Association) songahm taekwondo. I basically had to start over when I came here. It was a different style of training.”

It did not take Becklin long to find success since starting classes at PMA in February of 2012. Becklin won world championships in the 30-39-year-old first degree division of form and weapons in 2014 before stepping up to win the same titles in the second and third degree competitions in July.

“The first time I won, I was really nervous. I didn’t really know what to expect and I was surprised that it went so well,” Becklin said. “But this time around, I knew what to expect and I was ready to go even though I moved up a rank to second and third degree, I really felt that I was ready to take on that challenge of having more difficult competition.”

While Becklin has been dominant in the forms and weapons competitions the past two years, she finds herself in the same position that Brinkley was in. Becklin finished second in her division of sparring, but after seeing Brinkley bring home gold after four years of placing second in the event, she is determined to claim that title next year in her age group.

“(Brinkley) is a real inspiration to a lot of the women and young girls that train at Prime because she is so dedicated to her training. She’s an excellent martial artist,” Becklin said. “She got second place in sparring for four years in a row before she finally won this year. That really tells a lot of us that if you keep training and keep working, there is always a possibility that you can be able to achieve that goal next time.”