- Young Taekwondist from Hojancha wins gold in San Salvador
Luis Catrillo Marin | Newspaper Message
She is only 15 years old, but for some time she began to show that she has plenty of talent to collect medals in the world of martial arts where she has now added medal number 13 this time on an international stage.
It was precisely beyond the Costa Rican borders and from her native Hojancha where the ninth-year student of the Professional Technical College of that canton of Guanacaste, María Celeste Chacón Valerio, placed the national flag at the top of the podium thanks to a new gold medal in the XXI edition of the Central American Secondary Student Sports Games 2024 that took place in San Salvador, El Salvador.
Regionales del Istmo la Hojancheña took first place in the + 68 kilogram category in the Taekwondo discipline during a program that took place in the Badminton Dome of the El Polvorín Sports Complex, in the capital of Cuscatleca.
“I had an opponent from Nicaragua who was very tough, but I saw things that I could take advantage of, like the fact that she didn’t kick much and got tired easily. “So I made him move a lot,” said the Guanacaste athlete.
The Costa Rican delegation was made up of 264 people, of which 188 were athletes from 90 educational centers in the country, aged between 15 and 17 years, who competed in 10 disciplines: chess, athletics, basketball, soccer, judo, karate, swimming , taekwondo, table tennis and volleyball, in women’s and men’s categories.
All of them are national student champions in category D, coming from the Student Sports Games program organized by the Ministry of Public Education (MEP) and the Costa Rican Institute of Sports and Recreation (ICODER).
First steps
Chacón Valerio began in the world of taekwondo at just nine years of age, until he currently became part of the Hojancha headquarters of the San Yang Academy, a local academy that promotes new values in the practice of the discipline in that canton. and other places such as Playa Flamingo, Nicoya, Liberia, Bagaces, Playas del Coco and Philadelphia.
“The truth is that the fight in El Salvador was a bit complicated to win the medal; However, with the help of my coach, Misael Chacón, and the “coaching” of my teacher, Jaqueline Fuentes, I was able to perform the correct techniques to win the final victory,” said Chacón Valerio.
In the last Guanacaste 2024 National Sports Games, María Celeste won the gold medal in the youth + 68 kilogram category.
In addition, in 2023 she was National Champion of the Costa Rican Taekwondo Federation in + 59 kilograms.
