ATLANTA, USA — American collegiate Taekwondo is entering a potentially transformative new chapter with the launch of Savannah College of Art and Design’s (SCAD) Olympic Sport Taekwondo programme, led by experienced coach and current USA Taekwondo National Team staff member Lucas Rodrigues.
Rodrigues has been appointed SCAD’s inaugural Head Coach of Taekwondo and will lead a project designed to combine university education, athletic support and high-performance preparation, providing elite athletes with a structured pathway that can extend all the way towards Olympic qualification.
The initiative is particularly significant because collegiate Taekwondo itself is not new to the United States.
America has a long and respected tradition within university Taekwondo. The National Collegiate Taekwondo Association (NCTA) was established in 1970, while National Collegiate Taekwondo Championships have been held since the 1970s.
American university athletes have also represented the country internationally for decades, including at World University Taekwondo Championships and FISU World University Games.
In fact, the history of international university Taekwondo has a strong connection with the United States: the first FISU World University Taekwondo Championship was held at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1986.
The United States finished second overall at that inaugural championship and has continued to field national collegiate teams in major university competitions around the world.
More recently, the scale of American collegiate Taekwondo has continued to grow. The 2025 NCTA National Collegiate and High School Championships brought together hundreds of athletes representing universities and schools from across the country, while institutions including Brown University, MIT, UC Davis, Northeastern University, the University of Texas at Austin, Cornell, Harvard, Penn State and many others maintain active Taekwondo programmes or clubs.
What makes the SCAD project different, therefore, is not the presence of Taekwondo within an American university.
It is the model being created around it. Bringing the American collegiate high-performance model to Taekwondo
For generations, the United States university system has played a fundamental role in developing world-class athletes.
Sports such as track and field, swimming, soccer and many others have benefited from university structures that allow athletes to combine higher education with scholarships, coaching, sports science, facilities, competition and high-performance preparation. Many Olympic champions and international athletes have emerged through this system.
SCAD now intends to bring a comparable philosophy to Taekwondo.
The Atlanta-based programme is designed around the idea that an elite Taekwondo athlete should not necessarily have to choose between pursuing a university degree and pursuing an Olympic career.
Instead, both objectives can become part of the same pathway. That concept could represent an important evolution for the sport in the United States.
Atlanta may now become the birthplace of a new model for American university Taekwondo: one in which the sport is integrated more deeply into an institutional high-performance structure capable of supporting national and international athletes while they complete their education.
Lucas Rodrigues to lead the project
The responsibility of building the programme has been entrusted to Lucas Rodrigues, a high-performance coach with more than two decades of experience in athlete development.
SCAD officially lists Rodrigues as its inaugural Taekwondo Head Coach, leading the new Olympic Sport Taekwondo programme launched in 2026.
Rodrigues began competing in Taekwondo in Brazil in 1994 before relocating to the United States. He later transitioned into professional coaching and in 2012 founded G3 America Taekwondo, developing athletes who went on to achieve results at state, national and international level.
His work eventually led to his appointment to the USA Taekwondo National Team coaching staff in 2023.
Since joining the national programme, Rodrigues has worked with athletes across different age divisions, including cadet, junior, U21 and senior teams, and has coached American athletes at major international competitions.
He currently continues his work within the USA Taekwondo coaching structure while beginning this new chapter with SCAD.
from left to right SCAD’s athletes Chloe Chua, Michael Rodriguez, Victor Rodrigues and Caroline Dos Santos
For Rodrigues, the opportunity represents much more than simply coaching another team.
“When I first learned about SCAD’s vision for Taekwondo, I knew I wanted to be a part of it. It is groundbreaking and exciting for our sport to have our first fully funded Taekwondo college programme attached to a high-performance programme designed to position athletes to have a pathway to the Olympics. Truly sensational.”
Rodrigues also highlighted the educational dimension behind the project.
“Then I learned about SCAD’s mission and how much they invest in their students’ success and the amazing resources they provide. It is truly a game changer for these world-class athletes, giving them that type of opportunity and value. I am super excited to lead and represent SCAD on the field.”
Education without abandoning the Olympic dream
One of the greatest challenges facing many high-level Taekwondo athletes around the world comes during the transition from junior to senior competition.
At approximately the same stage of life in which athletes are expected to begin university studies or establish their professional future, they also face the increasing demands of international high-performance sport.
Travel, training camps, ranking events, recovery, coaching and qualification tournaments can make that balance extremely difficult.
The American collegiate sports system has historically helped athletes in other disciplines bridge that gap.
SCAD’s proposal is to create an environment where Taekwondo athletes can pursue both goals simultaneously.
The potential impact goes beyond the United States.
A university programme combining education and serious high-performance Taekwondo could become highly attractive to international athletes seeking an American university education without abandoning their competitive careers.
That creates the possibility of SCAD developing a roster featuring both leading American athletes and international competitors.
“SCAD is a world-class art and design university at the forefront of the latest technology and trends. Our President and Co-Founder Paula Wallace along with SCAD leadership actively identify opportunities to advance SCAD with those trends. Adding taekwondo to our list of varsity sports with its Olympic promise and growing popularity was an obvious choice”, explain, Amanda Haverstick – Executive Director of Athletics.
–Our athletes are creative thinkers and we feel sports and art/design go hand in hand. Playing sports is a creative endeavor. Our amazing athletes come to SCAD because of the incredible opportunity to study towards a degree while competing. Combining those two passions is exciting to watch.
A tradition that now takes another step forward
It is important to distinguish this new initiative from the already extensive history of collegiate Taekwondo in America. Universities across the United States have supported Taekwondo clubs and competitive programmes for decades.
The country’s National Collegiate Taekwondo Championships have produced generations of athletes, while American university teams have competed internationally since the early years of World University Taekwondo.
In 2012, for example, more than 600 athletes representing over 100 colleges and universities competed at the U.S. National Collegiate Championships, where the American team for that year’s World University Taekwondo Championships was selected.
Two years later, another national collegiate championship involving more than 400 competitors from over 100 institutions selected the U.S. team for the 2014 World University Championships.
That history matters.
SCAD is therefore not starting American university Taekwondo from zero. Instead, it is attempting to take the next step. The innovation is to provide Taekwondo with a structure closer to the established American collegiate high-performance model seen in major sports — connecting university education, institutional athletic support and elite sporting ambitions within one programme.
With the Los Angeles 2028 Olympic Games approaching, the United States is entering an important period for athlete development across Olympic sports. For American Taekwondo, LA28 represents both an enormous sporting opportunity and a challenge: developing a deeper pool of athletes capable of competing internationally while building sustainable pathways for the generations that follow.
Programmes such as SCAD could become part of that broader landscape.
The objective extends beyond producing university champions.
The ambition is to create athletes capable of competing internationally while receiving the academic and institutional support required to prepare for life during and after elite sport.
For Rodrigues, who already works inside the USA Taekwondo high-performance environment, the connection between those two worlds is particularly significant.
He will now have the opportunity to apply his international coaching experience to the development of an entirely new university structure.
This project is supported and endorsed by KPNP, an electronic systems company that has placed its trust in and is committed to this innovative sports education system.
A model the Taekwondo world will be watching
The development of SCAD Taekwondo could also have implications beyond one university.
If the programme demonstrates that elite Taekwondo, higher education and significant institutional athletic support can successfully coexist, other American universities may eventually consider similar models.
That could dramatically expand the opportunities available to young Taekwondo athletes.
For decades, American swimmers, track and field athletes, soccer players and competitors from numerous other sports have entered university knowing that their athletic development does not necessarily have to stop when their academic career begins.
For Taekwondo athletes, that same concept may now be beginning to take shape in Atlanta.
The United States already possesses the history.
It already possesses the university competitions. It already possesses generations of collegiate Taekwondo athletes.
The team behind a historic project
The launch of SCAD Atlanta’s Taekwondo programme is also the result of the work and vision of key members of the university’s athletics structure. Director of Athletics Glen Hill has played a central role in the development of the programme, alongside Associate Athletic Director and Senior Women’s Leader Shelley Davis and Director of Fitness, Intramurals and Recreation Leslee LeBouton.
The broader SCAD athletics leadership also includes Amanda Haverstick, Executive Director of Athletics at SCAD Savannah, whose long-standing experience in collegiate sport adds further institutional strength to this new chapter.
Together with Head Coach Lucas Rodrigues, these professionals represent an important part of the structure helping turn a pioneering idea into reality: a fully funded collegiate Taekwondo programme designed to combine higher education, elite competition and an Olympic development pathway in the United States.
What SCAD is attempting to add is another critical component: a fully supported high-performance university pathway with an eye on the highest level of international competition.
With Lucas Rodrigues at the helm, Atlanta could become the starting point for a new chapter in the evolution of collegiate Taekwondo in the United States.
And with Los Angeles 2028 on the horizon, the timing could hardly be more significant.
Coming soon, we will introduce the athletes who are already representing the university. We will also share more information on how to learn about the university’s admission process.
Carlos Hernández
Mundotaekwondo.com
