Five students recently saw their hard work and dedication pay off when they were promoted to black belts at Swift Current Christian Taekwondo. 

Head Instructor, Gary Voysey, elaborated on the amount of work it takes to achieve a black belt. 

“The first-degree black belt, normally a student would train twice, three times a week for three to four years generally,” he explained. “Then between the first and the second-degree black belts, then you're training generally, a year to two years before you're promoted and then third degree, it's a couple more years and it's not just training, but it's teaching and all that good stuff.” 

Tate Unger was promoted to 2nd Dan, Callie and Logan Ebner were promoted to 3rd Dan, Jeremy Widdup was promoted to 2nd Dan, and Lucas Bulin was promoted to 1st Dan. 

Dan is a term used in Korean martial arts to denote a black belt and translated to ‘level’ or ‘stage.’ 

“I've been in martial arts for a very long time and the rate of attrition is pretty high,” Voysey stated. “For example, if you started with a. group of 100 people as a white belt, you and maybe one more will actually make it to black belt. So, to have people that are dedicated, not just to get their first-degree or second-degree, but now we're onto our third-degree black belt, it's pretty awesome as an instructor.” 

The highest belt level in the World Taekwondo system awarded to living people is 9th Dan.