UMass Boston Student Goes for the Gold in Summer Olympics 2004

By Anne-Marie Kent

Not your average 21-year-old, UMass Boston sophomore Fredson Gomes has more martial arts championship medals than he can carry, his own website, and plans to compete for the gold medal in Tae Kwon Do in the summer 2004 Olympics in Athens.

As a College of Management student, Gomes studies business management with a concentration in marketing, but in the short run his eyes are on the gold in Athens.

“I practice four to five hours a day, basically doing what I have to do,” says the Brockton resident. “It’s important that I come to school too, just to keep my mind occupied on something else. At school I can forget about practice, focus on schoolwork, and then I just go back to training. It’s not a bad mix.”

Born in Sao Vicente, Cape Verde, Gomes came to this country at the age of six. When he was ten, he was introduced to martial arts. “My dad signed me up. I was a chubby little kid. I didn’t want to go, but after a while, I got used to it,” he says.

He began competing in 1994. That year, he won gold medals at the Northeast Karate Championships and at the Plymouth Open Karate and Kung Fu Championships. Each and every year after that, he placed top honors at various Karate and Tae Kwon Do championships. He recently won the Massachusetts State Championship, U.S. National Championship medal, All African Games Championship medal, and the Egypt Olympic Qualifiers bronze medal.

“I used to do open-style Karate tournaments. It’s difficult to describe. It’s not continuous. If you score five points, you win. Tae Kwan Do is a little bit different. Tae Kwon Do is three rounds, three minutes. It’s continuous,” says Gomes. “I toured all over the U.S. doing point-fighting Karate, and Tae Kwon Do has just given me the opportunity to travel all over the world. I’ve been to Korea, Egypt, France, and Nigeria.”

In Athens, he will represent his home country of Cape Verde. “It’s where I was born. It just gives me great pride to compete for Cape Verde. I want to bring glory to the country,” says Gomes. “It’s sort of a small country. The way I look at it is, where would this country be without a Michael Jordan or Wayne Gretzky or some idols like that? I want to give hope to the kids back home.”

No doubt, in August, they’ll be cheering for him in Cape Verde, in Brockton—and, he hopes, at UMass Boston. So far, classmates have been supportive. When he demonstrated his skills at a recent Black History Month event, Gomes says, many of his fellow students purchased fundraising t-shirts to support him.

Come August, Gomes’s former UMass Boston soccer coach, Noel Cotterell, will also be cheering him on. “I’m not surprised at Fredson’s success,” says Cotterell. “He’s a coach’s dream. He plays intensely and learns quickly due to his self-initiative. He maintains personal standards on and off that field that are exemplary. He will never stop until the task at hand is completed.”

Visit Gomes’s website for the latest news of his competitions: www.fredsongomes.com.

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