When John Paul Noyes moved to the Flathead from Berkeley, a city he calls a “martial arts mecca,” there was nothing here to indicate that the valley would eventually become the taekwondo stronghold of Montana. Of course, if Noyes hadn’t moved here, it never would have.
Noyes said there were at least 10 martial arts schools in the valley when he first began teaching taekwondo classes through the Kalispell Parks and Recreation Department in 1995. But there wasn’t much for taekwondo, his area of expertise.
“I saw that there was a hole in that particular realm of martial arts here,” Noyes said.
So after several months of teaching courses through the parks and recreation department, Noyes opened his own club: Big Sky Martial Arts. Nearly 15 years later, it’s the largest taekwondo club in the state.
The club, located on the corner of Main and Third streets, has about 200 students and a waiting list to join. Noyes doesn’t like his classes to get oversaturated. When his competitive team travels to national tournaments, it brings up to 15 fighters. Clubs in other Montana cities usually bring two or three at most, Noyes said.
But aside from the sheer membership numbers, Big Sky Martial Arts’ success can also be measured in its strong showings at regional and national tournaments – it has nurtured numerous national champions.
Among the most promising champions to ever train at Big Sky Martial Arts is 21-year-old Alan Bowman, who recently won first place at the AAU Nationals in the black belt middleweight division, an extremely difficult accomplishment, Noyes said.
“To win at nationals is an achievement,” Noyes said. “But to win your division in black belt is a whole another thing.”
Noyes added that the middleweight division is as tough as they come.
“Every one of them is 6-foot plus and they hit like a ton of bricks,” he said.
Bowman now will head to the U.S. National Team Trials, held in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., on Sept. 11-13. If he places in the top four there, he will make the national team and travel to tournaments in Europe to face some of the best competition in the world.
At nationals, which were also held in Fort Lauderdale, Bowman won four fights, one because his competitor bowed out with an injury. Bowman has been training at Big Sky Martial Arts under the tutelage of Noyes since he was 10 years old. He said it had long been his dream to bring a national championship back to the Flathead.
“It was great; I haven’t felt better,” he said. “All my expectations for the last 11 years had come through at that moment.”
Taekwondo is a Korean martial art and is one of the most popular martial arts in the world. Though it involves both punching and kicking, Noyes said kicking is the heart of the sport. Some people learn it for self-defense. At Big Sky Martial Arts, students train year-round, which Noyes said separates his sport from traditional sports like basketball. Noyes said taekwondo is a highly skilled sport, but anybody can take it up.
“Great athletes aren’t born, they’re built,” Noyes said. “I can train anyone to be a good athlete. It just takes time.”
Noyes and his wife Debbie, who is also an accomplished black belt and an instructor at the club, preach the virtues of taekwondo as a philosophy, not just a hobby. At classes, students recite the five golden rules of taekwondo, which Noyes believes are applicable to life in general: courtesy, integrity, perseverance, self-control and indomitable spirit. The final one refers to a person’s refusal to give up.
“Every decision you make, is it one that promotes you in some positive way?” Noyes said. “If it’s not, then maybe you should re-think it.”
He said students who don’t follow those rules have no chance of earning their black belt. There are 10 belts below black belt and then, once the first black belt is achieved, there are 10 more levels, or “degrees.” Noyes, who started taekwondo when he was 7 and has done it for 34 years, is a sixth-degree black belt.
“Once you get your first black belt, it’s just the beginning,” Noyes said.
In Berkeley, Noyes was the head coach for UC Berkeley’s taekwondo program, which had 1,200 students. He said his competitive team won the national championship each of his three years as coach. He had started out as a competitor as well, but a knee blowout sidelined him and forced him to re-evaluate his priorities. It was then, he said, that he fell in love with coaching.
“That was a turning point for me,” he said.
Now in the Flathead, Noyes, who is a member of the Martial Arts Hall of Fame, takes pride in coaching a program that routinely produces some of the state’s finest taekwondo competitors. He said his team holds its own against programs from big cities and, not infrequently, takes home a few trophies.
“We compete very aggressively against those guys,” Noyes said. “They don’t scare us at all.”