Pauline Lopez: Defeated Again and Again—Until She Wasn’t
Pauline Lopez was on a losing streak for eight months. Every month, she would participate in a tournament, and in every tournament, she would lose. From April to November in 2019, Pauline was dealt with loss after loss.
“I just kept losing,” Pauline told ALL-STAR.
“You train so hard for a match that’s 2 minutes long, and you’re training for months at a time, sacrificing everything, you’re training three times in a day, and you go to a competition and you lose the first match?”
“It gets so daunting. It hurts.”
Doubt seeped in, to a point when Pauline began asking God if taekwondo was meant for her. “Mahal pa ba ako ng taekwondo?” she would ask.
But the losing streak continued.
As she recounted her routine, it felt like listening to the plot of Edge of Tomorrow, but in Pauline’s case, there was no advancement, no victory, you just die every day. And then you wake up to lose again.
“How do you get up? How do you wake up in the morning and say ‘Let’s do this again!’? How do you love it again after 10 years of doing it? It’s definitely a challenge to bring yourself back up.”
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A month before the 2019 SEA Games, after enduring an eight-month losing streak, Pauline shut out the noise that fed her doubts, and she trained even harder every single day.
And then came tournament day—her moment. The SEA Games, hosted on home soil, could have magnified the pressure, but Pauline had long since learned to thrive under it.
Her many months of training, pain, hard work, and sacrifice culminated in two minutes.
The next thing she knew, she was crying on the podium wearing a gold medal and raising the Philippine flag with her arms. She won. After 8 months of losing to everyone, she finally won.
“I didn’t care what my medal was. I was doing it for myself, for my country, for my family. I was just giving and doing everything I love for the for sport,” said Pauline.
That journey was the toughest challenge Pauline had ever faced in taekwondo—from an eight-month losing streak to standing on the SEA Games podium.
“I broke down because I wanted to tell everyone, ‘You guys just don’t know! You guys just don’t know!‘”
Her parents came home to the Philippines for the first time just to support her in the tournament.
“I ran to my mom, my dad, my coaches… That was a core memory. I will never forget it.”
* * *
Growing up in California, Pauline moved thousands of miles away to chase her taekwondo dreams, missing her family every day. But that was just one of many sacrifices. Despite all she has experienced in sports, standing on the podium still feels surreal.
“How it feels standing on that podium is everything—it’s a culmination of all the sacrifices that you’ve made: the hard work, tears, the sacrifice, the training, the hours, it’s there!”
“The hard work is in the gym. You’re just there at the tournament to collect what’s already yours. But you don’t do that if you don’t put in the hard work in training,” she added.
“You can’t do taekwondo because you’re a girl.”
Ironically, Pauline chose taekwondo precisely because someone once told her it wasn’t a sport for girls.
“My dad was part of the national team back then, and when we moved to the States, he vowed to never teach us taekwondo because he had such a bad injury,” Pauline said.
But her dad started teaching in Carson, and Pauline would tag along with him.
“I would tell him, ‘Dad, I really wanna do this, I really wanna do the sport.’”
“‘Nope. You can’t do it because you’re a girl.’”
Riled up and angry, a seven-year-old Pauline answered back with a defiant “NO!”
“Because he told me I’m a girl, and because I am stubborn and I’m the middle child, I am gonna do it. I’m gonna show you that I can and I will!” Pauline said, recalling her thoughts at that time.
“I think there’s a stubborn bone in me, that when I want something, I will not take no for an answer.”
But like any father who cannot resist the incessant plea of a daughter, Pauline’s dad eventually allowed her to take his taekwondo classes.
“And so I started taking classes with my dad, and he was like, ‘Ah! May potential pala!’”
“Ever since, I think I changed his perspective—that girls can do it too,” said Pauline.
“That’s what drew me in. It’s the challenge. Taekwondo isn’t just about kicking and punching; it’s about discipline and the values you gain. Without it, I wouldn’t be the woman I am today.”
“My mother, my sister, and my grandmother are so powerful.”
We were amazed to learn that, even at just seven years old, Pauline already had strong principles and the confidence to stand up for herself—especially as a young girl.
Apparently, these are things she picked up from her grandmother, mom, and older sister.
“My mother is such a strong woman to begin with, and I have an older sister, who is just a really strong woman. She showed me not to take no for an answer,” said Pauline.
“My mother, my sister, and my grandmother are so powerful. They didn’t do sports that well. They couldn’t even go to a taekwondo gym to kick!” Pauline laughed.
“However, the examples that they set every day. They had to be these strong women and carry all of us on their backs so we can have the opportunities and experiences we have today.”
At 67 years old, her grandmother would ride the LRT with her and take her to her taekwondo training.
“She is my role model with the way she took care of the family, the way she used to bring me to training every day when I was younger since I was 14. We ride the LRT from Quezon City in Balintawak all the way to Vito Cruz—every day! And she was 67 years old—she’d take me to training because she didn’t want me to go by myself.”
Pauline Lopez to her students: “Don’t be like me! Be better!”
Now, Pauline is coaching dozens of students who, like her, have found something special in taekwondo—just as she did when she was seven.
“What was the most meaningful conversation you’ve ever had with a young athlete looking up to you?” we asked Pauline.
She was caught off guard—no one had ever asked her that before.
“Oh my goodness!”
After a short pause, she enumerated things her students told her: from going about the athletic life into school and balancing both, and someone telling her they wanted to be like her.
“I remember there was a student who came up to me and said, ‘Coach Pau, I really want to be like you and I will do everything I can.’ I said, ‘Don’t be like me, be better!”
“I talk to them like they’re adults because eventually, that’s how the world is going to treat them,” Pauline said.
That means she doesn’t sugarcoat.
One time, a 13-year-old girl told her she wanted to be on the national team, just like her.
“I said, ‘Okay, we have a four-year plan, and this is what’s gonna happen. And if you stick to this, I won’t guarantee that you will make national team but I will guarantee you will be a better version of yourself.’”
As she reflected on her relationship with her students, Pauline sighed and made a humbling remark.
“I’m always learning about it, I’m not the best coach, I know that there’s so much more to learn transitioning from athlete to coach. The series of conversations that’s meaningful, insightful, and sometimes, I’m not just teaching them, I’m learning from them.”
Now, Pauline is someone to these students: they look up to her, they respect her, and they believe in everything that she says. In many ways we don’t realize, she is changing lives at this very moment.
“How did that impact you?” we asked.
“It made me love the sport again.”
As Pauline uttered those words, it felt like she won the 2019 SEA Games all over again.
“It made me love not just the sport, but the martial art, why it’s here, why sports is valuable, not just kids but in people’s lives. Sports mimics life. And that teaches you invaluable lessons that you won’t always learn in school. The resilience to get back up—that’s something that will carry you through life.”
Pauline Lopez sees it as her mission to make taekwondo more inclusive and accessible.
“How can it reach the provinces and inspire young girls who don’t even realize they have the potential to pursue the sport?” she asked.
“We have to start in my own school and I think now, I want to find that next champion and empower them and train them to reach what I never reached.”
Today, there are girls who may be facing the same obstacles that the headstrong seven-year-old Pauline faced as a child just because she’s a girl. Her message to young girls in the same boat:
“Do it. Because you won’t know unless you try.”
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