Enloe Athlete Lelan Yung Wins At Home and Abroad

Lelan demonstrates hand form movements at the US Wushu Trial

Enloe senior Lelan Yung may be Enloe’s most accomplished athlete. In November, Lelan travelled to Emei, China with the US Wushu team, and in June, he will run in the New Balance Nationals for Track & Field, alongside Zachary Dobbin (10), Roderick Muldrow (12), and Donovan Addison (12). Whether competing on the national or international level, Yung has proved his talent.

Yung’s first athletic endeavor was Kung Fu. Stemming from a recommendation by a family friend, he began Kung Fu in the third grade, and ever since, he has attended the same martial arts school, Chinese Kung Fu Center in Raleigh. And while he started competitions in middle school, he didn’t begin attending national competitions in the last two years. “Wushu isn’t sparring-based like Kung Fu,” Yung said, “It’s by yourself, and it’s more like art because it’s not about combat.” Wushu is divided in two ways: hand forms and weapons forms, with animal imitations as a subcategory.

Yung travelled across the state and country competing in various tournaments, but last May, he travelled to National Harbor, Maryland for the US trials. “I didn’t even know about the world competitions until my coach told me,” Lelan said. The process for selection is rigorous; either competitors must place first in their respective category (divided by animal imitation and form) or score a 9.4 out of 10 to qualify for the US team and travel to China. At the US trials, Yung competed in two events, and after finishing first in both, he qualified for the international competition.

“After I found out I qualified, I went in Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and some Saturdays, every week until worlds,” Yung recalled. After six months of training, he travelled to Emei, China for the World Traditional Wushu Championship on November 7th along with the rest of Team US. After four days of competition and meeting people from across the globe, Yung left China with two bronze medals and a lifetime of memories. He met fellow athletes from Ukraine, Brazil, Russia, as well as other Americans. “It was interesting to see how people from different places took different approaches to the same thing,” he said, “but at the same time, there was this unity in all of us competing in one sport. You don’t see that often.”

Almost immediately after returning from his international debut, Yung began training for his upcoming track season. Similar to Wushu, he began the sport out of curiosity before stumbling into success, “It was just fun to run around and race people,” he said, “and I thought I was pretty fast.” 2018 marked his fourth and final season on the track team, but stands as his most accomplished to date.

Yung competes almost purely in short-distance sprint and jump events, and this past April, Enloe’s 4x200m relay team qualified after finishing with a time 1:30.77 at the Cap 7 Championship, almost half a second faster than the required time of 1:31.3. “Our goal was to qualify, but I didn’t know the exact time,” said senior Lelan Yung. “We just ran as fast as we could.” The competition will take place on June 15-17th at NC A&T State University in Greensboro. Last year, the event hosted 5,100 athletes from 7th to 12th grade across 45 states, Canada, Mexico, and Germany.

“I’m honored and excited to represent Enloe,” he said. “It’s kind of like the Wushu competition where I thought, ‘Woah, I can’t believe we could do this.’” Yung also qualified for regionals for the triple jump based on his rank within the conference, and he will be joined by several other Enloe athletes who also qualified in individual and relay events.

From Emei, China to Greensboro, NC, Lelan Yung has displayed a fierce dedication to detail. Both Wushu and short-distance sprints require a perfectionist’s touch, something Yung clearly possesses. While he won’t be running track in college and says he won’t try to qualify for the US Wushu team again next year, he wants to continue Wushu, either through a club or by himself. Unsurprisingly, however, when it comes to his academic goals, he is starting on another equally detail-oriented path when he starts at Virginia Tech this fall: a degree in architecture.