Student National Championships Est. 1986

The BSTF was established in 1986 as a not-for-profit organisation to facilitate university Taekwondo clubs to train and compete together. The present day BSTF Student National Taekwondo Championships Series developed from these annual Student National Taekwondo Championships competitions, known colloquially by university taekwondo club members as “the Nationals.”

The first Nationals were organised in 1987 and were held at the University of Southampton. The event began as a collaboration between students of Southampton and Warwick University’s Taekwondo clubs, including one of the BSTF’s founding members and current patron of the charity Master Graham Jones. The inaugural championships included student teams from the University of Southampton, Southampton Technical College (now Southampton City College), Leeds University and Warwick University.

By 1989 the organisation had evolved into a constituted national organising committee to cater for the expanding event.

The first Student National Taekwondo Championships included only the WTF rules sparring discipline. The ITF rules sparring discipline was added in 1992, with various individual, pairs and team patterns events being added over time.

In 2013 the Nationals underwent another substantial expansion, introducing and in some cases reintroducing disciplines including ITF rules sparring, and pairs patterns events which had been absent from the program of disciplines delivered 2005 – 2012. Between 2013 and 2016 the already popular Nationals event was growing rapidly. The organisers expanded the annual program to a multi-event Championships Series, catering for growing demand from well established and newly formed university taekwondo clubs.

In February 2016 BSTF delivered our 30th annual Student National Taekwondo Championships, welcoming a  record 432 individual university student athletes from 46 universities, totalling 723 entries across all disciplines (records well surpassed since then). The event was delivered in partnership with BUCS as the qualification tournament for the UK’s universities European Universities Sports Association (EUSA) Games composite team. BSTF managed the first of our annual qualifier teams at the July 2016 EUSA Games, at which 21 sports were contested by over 5000 student-athletes from over 300 universities across Europe.

In 2016 BSTF became a Charitable Incorporated Organisation (CIO Ltd charity). The organisation was transformed into a professional body, with all of the advantages and responsibilities of registered charity status made available to the organisation and its recipients, building the optimal structure to support all university taekwondo practitioners and volunteers nationwide. Charity status affirms BSTF’s commitment to not-for-profit student sport, professional management, sustainable delivery and development, and the provision of an exceptional level of university taekwondo events and services.

In 2017 BSTF partnered with BUCS to deliver the London Universities Sports League (LUSL) taekwondo competition. A milestone was reached in our 2018 LUSL competition where, for the first time we are aware of in a major taekwondo competition, a greater number female sparring athletes than their male counterparts competed in what has been a traditionally male dominated sport, globally. BSTF maintains an highly diverse membership and good gender balance in our competitions, and individual university taekwondo clubs across the UK continue to do an fantastic job of welcoming students of all backgrounds to taekwondo.

In 2018 the charity joined a comprehensive sport review process with British Universities and Colleges Sport (BUCS), an umbrella body body for university sport in the United Kingdom and a charitable company in the same mould as BSTF. BSTF and BUCS were a natural fit, and our professional organisation and well established events saw that BSTF’s proposal was the 2nd highest scoring of the 42 proposals from across the sport sector (to become a BUCS program partner) received by BUCS.

In 2019 BSTF agreed to become BUCS university taekwondo partner — our long running BSTF Student National Championships Series became joined over 100,000 student-athletes across more than 50 sports as a part of the BUCS core competition programme. In November 2019 BSTF delivered the inaugural BSTF BUCS Student Taekwondo Championships Series event.