No. 1 in the world, Blue Valley Northwest junior Logan Weber fights for Olympic dream

The first time Logan Weber kicked someone in the face, she bawled.

The action was too mean, too vicious for the 8-year-old, whose mom put her in taekwondo classes because she was such a timid kid.

“She just cried and cried,” Weber’s mom, Pamela, said. “She would let them kick her and was just fine with it. But she wouldn’t kick back.”

Nearly a decade later, Weber, a junior at Blue Valley Northwest, is ranked No. 1 in the world among junior female taekwondo athletes in her weight class. She’ll fight Friday in the World Taekwondo Junior Championships in Canada, the only American lightweight to qualify.

Now 16, Weber harbors realistic Olympic aspirations for 2020. For now, she still competes as a junior, but can start fighting at the senior level when she turns 17 — the first step toward gaining Olympic points on the senior circuit and qualifying for the 2020 Tokyo Games.

Strangely enough, Weber’s inauspicious start helped her slowly move away from her shyness.

“My mom made me do taekwondo for self-defense purposes, so I had to stay in it no matter what,” Weber said. “So I tried out ‘poomsae,’ which is the forms version where you’re not getting hit, and it ended up being boring to me. I said, ‘You know what, I’ll stick with sparring, I’ll just see how it goes.’ I stuck with it, and it led me pretty far.”

Although she consciously made that decision, Weber was still showing hesitancy when it came to actual combat. So her mom bribed her with chocolate in one of her first national tournaments, and Weber nailed three headshots within the first 30 seconds of the fight.

The switch had flipped. Weber was done getting beaten up, and started learning how to — without guilt — inflict her own punishment.

The shots she so willingly took at a young age bred a level of toughness that complements her constantly evolving aggressiveness.

“I’ve broken pretty much every finger,” she said. “I’ve broken my foot, and then my wrist and hand, which happened at the same time. I’ve broken my nose a couple times. I’ve broken a couple of toes from kicking, which happens so often I don’t even think about it. My hip kind of comes out of place sometimes. I tore part of my Achilles.”

Weber shrugs.

“No serious injuries, though.”

In the weeks before the World Championships, as Weber practices at Ko’s Black Belt Academy in Overland Park with her coach, Seth Wilson, that reckless abandon is obvious.

She kicks without hesitancy, unleashing fierce contact at whoever she’s sparring with, male or female. Spinning in the air, Weber throws shot after shot, her foot-long ponytail swinging along with her.

“Just watching her move compared to her peers, it’s night and day,” Wilson said. “Logan’s strength is she’s adaptable; if you want her to be aggressive, she’ll be aggressive. If you want her to counter, she will. Her fundamentals are just above and beyond.”

As November begins, Weber is doing it all in three layers of clothing, including a sauna suit, as she begins in earnest the process of cutting about 11 pounds before the world competition. This process is a normal part of the sport, although one that Weber has had to sacrifice for. She works with a nutritionist, eliminating carbs and passing on ice cream runs with her friends.

A couple of years ago, Weber even slashed eight inches from her ponytail to make weight. Taekwondo is hardly a glamorous sport, but she has taken it all in stride. Making the Olympics is her dream, even if she has to chop up her schedule, her diet and her hair.

“If I don’t make the Olympics, I don’t want to be like, ‘What if I had gone to training that night instead of doing something else?’” she said. “I don’t want to have any regrets. I’ve missed out on a lot, but it’s worth it to me.”

On Friday, Weber will compete for a Junior World Championships gold medal. But her journey is just starting.

“For her to be at this level at such a young age…” Wilson said, trailing off and shaking his head.

“Sixteen years old — we have so much time. It’s going to be a beautiful thing.”

This story was originally published November 16, 2016 at 1:46 PM with the headline "No. 1 in the world, Blue Valley Northwest junior Logan Weber fights for Olympic dream."