Congratulations to all the members of our Karate squad from our Basingstoke Karate club, who competed at the 2018 Karate Wales Youth Nationals recently. There was fierce competition across all the disciplines with many competitors and coaches plus a few of the officials getting to grips with the new rules brought in by The World Union of Karate-D0 Federations. The standard and etiquette of competitors, coaches and officials was very good with only one example of poor etiquette seen during the day.
We had some great results from newcomers to the squad with Alistair, Gabriel, Emily and Rosie all winning medals. Alistair ended up winning a Bronze medal for Kata, Gold for individual Fighting and Gold for Team fighting with Gabriel and Lex-Jay. Emily in her first competition won a silver medal in Kata and also Bronze in team fighting alongside Ruby and Rosie and Toki also in his first event won Bronze in the Team fighting.
The Karate Wales event was open to all styles of Karate (ie no Kung Fu, Kickboxing or Taekwondo at this event.) There were practitioners from Shotokan Karate, Shito Ryu Karate, Wado Ryu Karate, Shukokai Karate and Kyokushinkai Karate. It was very interesting to see the same katas performed differently by each style and also some new katas for us.
Thanks to Jess Sensei for coaching and Donna and Ruth for making sure that all the competitors were in the right place at the right time for their events.