Rows of medals, plaques and trophies line the entrance to Lonnie Matthews’ Taekwondo studio — the accolades from a martial arts career that has taken her around the world. Her most recent awards, however, may be her most impressive yet.
Matthews, who for seven years has been battling a rare form of cancer, won a pair of gold medals and a silver earlier this month at the U.S. Open Hanmadang in Chicago. She also earned the tournament’s “Spirit of Taekwondo” award for her performance, which came just two months after a pair of major surgeries.
“It was pretty awesome,” said Matthews, the owner and master at Kang’s Martial Arts in Coralville. “I wasn’t really sure I’d be able to do it again, or what was really going to happen. I don’t know, it was just pure determination, and I decided to go for it.”
Since being diagnosed in 2004 with leiomyosarcoma, an unpredictable cancer that attacks the body’s soft tissue, the 49-year-old Matthews has gone under the knife eight times to have tumors removed. In May, doctors carved out the lower lobe of a lung, as well as muscle from her arm — surgeries that might have sidelined a more timid person for months. Instead, Matthews was back teaching classes and training at her studio by June.
Randall Tippetts, an instructor under Matthews at Kang’s, calls her ability to bounce back from surgeries — not just this latest round, but the others over the years — nothing short of incredible. “The more cancer has tried to take from her, the more she would try to fight back with Taekwondo, and the more stubborn she got,” Tippetts said.
Matthews took nearly 40 members of her studio the U.S. Open Hanmadang, an international tournament Aug. 5-7 that featured more than 750 competitors. After winning the trio of medals for power-breaking events, her students were on hand to cheer her on when she received the spirit award.
Matthews, who works as a job placement counselor for Linn County, has been involved in Taekwondo since she was 19. She joined Kang’s Martial Arts eight years ago and purchased the business from its founder, Min Seok Kang, in 2008.
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