CASSIUS KING AIMS FOR A SPOT ON THE OLYMPIC TAEKWONDO TEAM

“There are some martial arts places around,” King said. “But they don’t really cater to the Olympic style of taekwondo.”

While taekwondo is a Korean martial art that dates back thousands of years, competitive taekwondo is a relatively new addition to the Olympic categories, debuting at the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney. Traditional taekwondo is catered toward self-defense, while Olympic taekwondo revolves around points earned from well-placed strikes against opponents.

“I’m very new to this whole thing,” King said. “I’ve been training in martial arts for over a decade, but this specific style of taekwondo is a little bit new to me.”

While qualifying is incredibly difficult, Bachetti argues that making it to the Olympic level requires consistency above all else.

“This really transcends to anything,” Bachetti said. “You can’t be on and off. You have to be on all the time. That on button can be slower sometimes, but it can’t stop. And that's the biggest problem with people when they train is they'll stop and they're inconsistent. And once they're inconsistent, that's when they start to fail or lose that forward momentum.”

King echoed Bachetti’s sentiments about the merits of consistent effort, but added that enjoying the process is also conducive to long-term success.

“Enjoying what you do is very important,” King said. “You could have all the talent and skills in the world, but if you don't really enjoy doing it, I don't think that it's something that you should continue doing.”

Carole Connolly, King’s mother, praised her son for his relentless motivation, even though at one point King considered quitting the sport altogether.

“He had thought about stopping karate, but then decided to get his black belt and then his second degree black belt after that,” Connolly said. “I was very proud about that and I’m just proud in general as far as him being a kind, gentle human being.”

Only 128 fighters will compete in the Paris Games in May 2024, so the odds of qualifying are extremely slim. However, King hopes his Olympic aspirations inspire others to follow their passions.

“If anybody ends up reading this article, I would just hope that they’re inspired and continue to work hard in whatever they’re doing.”

Holocaust, pg. 1

tisemitism spread throughout Europe like an “epidemic.” Farhy attended Hebrew middle school in Bulgaria and said he felt “depressed” when he saw things such as “Death to the Jews,” written on the chalkboard.

“My father told me once, ‘You are just born in this era, and you do not know what it was [like] before that. I want you to know that this is new to me also. This did not exist in Bulgaria. We were like brothers. Jews and Bulgarians were living in peace without expression of antisemitism,’” Farhy said.

At the time, Farhy lived in a five-story building in Sofia — the capital of Bulgaria — composed of both Jewish and Bulgarian residents. He said the Gestapo occupied the space next to his building on one side, and the ministry for the persecution of the Jews on the other side. When the government ordered Jewish people to leave Sofia, Farhy said his family traveled to the railroad station with another family where children and their parents had to separate into different cars that took them to a “ghetto” outside the capital.

“When we arrived in the middle of the night in the town, the president of the Jewish community there greeted us and took us in [to] his house,” Farhy said. “In his house, in each room, a family [had] to live because they were coming more and more each day.”

Farhy said his father eventually got permission to move their family to another ghetto in Bulgaria where their relatives lived. Three days after a regime change occurred in the Bulgarian government, the Russian army came to free the Jews living in the ghetto Farhy’s family resided in at the time. Farhy added that the entire Jewish community greeted the Russian army upon their arrival.

“The whole Jewish community was in the square where the day before that we were not permitted to step in,” Farhy said. “The restrictions were awful.”

An attendee asked Farhy how the Holocaust impacted his faith in God. Farhy said he’s a secular Jew and very interested in science. He said he believes in God but in his “own way.”

“I’m strongly Jewish without being strongly religious,” Farhy said. “The Bulgarian society was Christian, but they were not overly reli - gious like the Polish people.”

Farhy said most Bulgarians didn’t hold hatred toward Jewish people like in the other European countries.

“It was fashionable to hate the Jews, but it was not in their hearts,” Farhy said.

Farhy concluded the event by explaining that the best way students can combat antisemitism is by being friendly.

“Be patient with the person that is antisemitic,” Farhy said. “Engage him in conversation, peaceful conversation, and try to convince him that it is not good for him to have in his heart hate towards those people.”