Rinna Babanto is all smiles after a successful campaign in the recent 28th SEA Games in Singapore.
BANKING on her extensive experience, a Cebuana jin bagged two medals in the recently concluded 28th Southeast Asian (SEA) Games in Singapore.
Rinna Babanto, a 17-year-old Sports Management student at De La Salle University (DLSU) in Manila, pocketed a silver medal in the women’s individual poomsae and a bronze in the women’s team poomsae.
Babanto earned 7.46 points from the first judge and 7.50 from the second for a total of 7.480 in the individual poomsae. She placed second to Singapore’s 19-year-old Sim Chelsea, who got eight points from both judges.
“I started taekwondo when I was 11 years old. My older brother influenced me to get into this martial arts but he was forced to stop because of asthma,” said Babanto, a product of Cebu’s Philippine Taekwondo Association (PTA) and the Team Cebu City-Taekwondo of sportsman Tony Del Prado.
Babanto’s first stint in the SEA Games saw her winning a bronze in the women’s team Poomsae.
Her involvement in taekwondo started out as a summer vacation activity.
“Nasuya ra ko sa akong kuya at first kay sige siya ug taekwondo (I was envious of my older brother because he was into taekwondo). I asked my parents if I can join a summer clinic in our school and everything started there,” she said.
Babanto is a veteran campaigner in international competitions.
She won a bronze medal in the Ninth World Taekwondo Poomsae Championships held in Mexico last year. She is a gold medalist in the 2013 World Poomsae Championships also in Mexico.
Babanto said she honed her skills while studying at the Guadalupe Elementary School. She studied high school at the Abellana National School and Southwestern University (SWU).
Because of her superb skills, she earned a scholarship grant from DLSU, which recruited her as a varsity taekwondo player.
Babanto is a consistent awardee of the Philippine Sportswriters Association (PSA) and the Sportswriters Association of Cebu (SAC).
Babanto and the rest of the Philippine Taekwondo Team will compete in the Korean Open slated late this year.