Freshman Thomas Hong recently qualified for the U.S. national short track speedskating world cup team.
Hang Jung Hong was at an ice rink in Seoul, South Korea, to watch her daughter Stephanie’s skating practice when she went into labor with her son.
Starting at about two years old, Thomas Hong would wobble around the house in his older sister’s much-too-large skates. After the family moved to Laurel in 2001, the siblings skated together. His sister eventually quit the sport at about 13 years old, but he kept at it.
Now a freshman at the University of Maryland, Thomas Hong has qualified for the U.S. national short track speedskating world cup team.
“Skating is meant to be with him,” said his sister, who graduated from this university in 2013. “He got all the good genes for the sport and I didn’t get any.”
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Hong finished among the top six male skaters in the fall qualifiers earlier this month, earning him a spot among the elite group of speedskaters. As part of the team, he will represent the United States during two Short Track World Cups in Montreal and Toronto at the end of this month and beginning of November.
“Normally, I would get the honor of training with the national team in Salt Lake City, Utah, which is all free and covered,” Hong said. “But being as I am a student right now, I declined my national team invite, but I still get to travel with the team and race internationally.”
The business student drives 30 minutes to Montgomery County four or five times a week to train at the Potomac Speedskating Club.
“Stepping off campus cuts back on my study time and doing homework and stuff, but I’ve done that all through high school, so it’s not too big a deal,” Hong said. “It seems pretty daunting to take those two weeks off for [the World Cups], though, because I’m going to miss all these lectures and make up exams and such and do that all on my own time.”
Pursuing a quality education has been a priority throughout Hong’s speedskating career, he said. Though other competitive speedskaters might choose to attend the University of Utah, which is near the national team’s training facility, Hong decided to stay in his home state because of the higher level of academics offered at this university, he said.
“Part of my goal is to also have a degree,” he said. “A lot of athletes out there do not have a degree and kind of forfeited that opportunity in order to train. Hopefully I’ll be able to graduate from the business school at Maryland and have a career in finance or consulting.”
Education is highly valued in the Hong family.
“We’re really proud of him for juggling both academics and sports,” his sister said.
He’s been balancing the two since the fourth grade, he said. Before then, he saw skating as merely a hobby, but that year he won his age division in the U.S. Short Track National Championships. He’s since won five more championships.
“Ever since then, I took it very seriously,” he said.
Every summer, Hong goes to train in South Korea, where he said they “have a good system in place to raise athletes.” The country typically does well in the sport during the Winter Olympics. In the 2010 Vancouver games, one-third of the male and female short track speedskating medalists were Korean.
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During a practice there last summer, a skater in front of Hong slipped and kicked up his back legs, slicing Hong’s chin open with his skate’s blade.
Hong was rushed to the emergency room and given 40 stitches, but was back on the ice after a day of rest.
“Thomas is an animal,” said Jeff Simon, Hong’s coach at the Potomac Speedskating Club. “He’s motivated and confident in his abilities. … Our bodies aren’t built for this sport, but people do it, and people like Thomas do it best.”
In the coming years, Hong hopes not only to train in South Korea but to compete there during the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang.
“I want to be like them and get to the top,” Hong said.
Simon said he has no doubt Hong will achieve that goal.
“I’ve been in the sport for over 10 years, competing internationally,” he said. “He’s definitely one of the guys who can do it on the world level. He can do big things at the Olympics.”
