Hi All
I hope that you have all had a great Christmas
and New Year. We have had a crazy time with Helena’s family visiting us
from Sweden for the last 6-weeks – consequently we haven’t done very
much training and our waist lines have nearly doubled!! J
But we are both looking forward to the dieting and
getting back into the training, however painful it is going to be – ouch,
I can feel it already.
Last term was a very good term for our club with two
events that really put us on the map:
The first one was the Central North Island regional
workshop that was held in the end of October. It was open to anyone in our
region with a brown belt or above and I was asked to lead half of it. I
constructed a two-hour lesson based around the self-defence applications of
one of the higher katas (Seipai).
We were very well received and all the other
instructors present commented on our high standards as well as their
fascination over the functionality of our applications. It was great to mix
with people from other clubs and we will be doing a lot more of that in the
near future.
Robbie Smith led the other half of the seminar with
some drills taken from the traditional Wado Ryu style – a lot of fun.
The other event was the Deanwell School Gala held in
the middle of November. We were asked to hold a kids karate demonstration
and we spend quite a few sessions practising for the big day.
It was the first demonstration of this nature that we
have done in NZ and it looked as if we were going to get rained on – but
the sun came out for us and we all put on a hell of a show with nearly the
entire junior club involved.
It went down very well and we have had a lot of great
feedback from many directions – well done everybody and thanks for your
efforts.
For next term, we are planning to have a large intake
of beginners for the Senior Club. We will advertising for the first time
since we started the club by doing a mail out to most houses in this area
– we hope to get around 10 - 15 new adults, so if any of you parents feel
like a change in lifestyle (and making some new friends) or know of anyone
that might; feel free to spread the word. (We only have a very limited
number of Junior places left though).
Helena is also planning to start a piwi group sometime
next term. This will be a group for kids aged between 5 and 7 years and will
be held once a week. It will be much more of a play session (with a martial
arts flavour) than the older junior group.
This piwi group is coming about as the result of a huge
number of requests from parents during the past 4-years and we will be
letting you know times and costs within the next couple of weeks.
Juniors:
Congratulations go to the following people who managed
to get the following grades:
Junior Red Belt
· Kaden Meehan
·
Serina Archer
· Alisha Nepe
· Sam Wilkinson
Junior
Yellow Belt
·
Andrew Peel
Junior
Orange Belt
·
Jelena Downey
Junior Green Belt
·
Emma Corban
·
Haylee Hutton
·
Terri Hutton
·
Mark Strachan
Junior Brown Belt
·
Andrew
Lanyon
·
Kent
Petersen
·
Keegan
Downey
A
fantastic effort from all of you!! Well done.
The
medallists in the end of term kata competition were the following:
Orange
belt and below:
·
Gold – Michaela
Bowman
·
Silver – Alisha
Nepe
·
Bronze – Kaden
Meehan
Green
Belt and above:
·
Gold - Kent
Petersen
·
Silver – Keegan
Downey
·
Bronze – Gretta
Rodriguez-Jolly
The
end of term sparring competition was as exciting as ever with the red team
winning 11-7.
Senior
Group:
Congratulations go to the following people who managed
to get the following grades:
8th
Kyu Yellow Belt
·
Blake Silvester
6th
Kyu Green Belt
·
Katy
Langley
3rd
Kyu Brown Belt
·
Leighton
Archer
·
Jocelyn
Scott
A
special mention goes to Jocelyn who has obviously put a lot of work into her
training resulting in a very good grading – Jocelyn now becomes one of
junior instructor team.
For those of you wanting to buy Karate suits or other martial arts equipment, please get in touch with Robbie Smith at 17 Edwin Street
St. Andrews
07-850 9390
025 604 1568
That’s
all for now, see you all next term.
Cheers