Karate England National Championships 14th November 2009

The LKA had a very successful day at the Karate England National Championships held at the Hillsborough Leisure Centre in Sheffield on 14th November. We took our Adult Squad along to give the event a try and a very good effort they made. Starting off the day’s successes was LKA Instructor Glenn Riley who won the Senior Male Open Kata event, performing both Unsu and Gojushiho-Dai to take his first major title.

We took the view for the Kumite that we would not bother doing Shobu Ippon as we do that all the time; so we entered all our fighters in the Sanbon events and the teams in both Sanbon and the new Rotation Team event, which we loved!

Our best event was the Junior Male Kumite in which we had all four medallists. Mark Hardy and Tom Little both fought well to take joint third place with Nick Smith being out-pointed by Ryan Tucker in the final. An excellent showing by all four young men!

Former LKA girl Emma Nunn (now competing for Cambridge University) fought very well to win the Junior Female Kumite with Mell Finlay taking third place in the same event.

Our Veterans didn't fare too badly either with Daryn Hobden and Brian Lister taking second and third place respectively in the Veteran Male Kumite. Sam Goulden won the Senior Male Kumite Over 78kg event and then went on to lead the Team out in the Sanbon Team Kumite event, which we won with a convincing victory over Shikon in the final.

We were pleased not only with the manner of the win, which was decisive, but also the fact that we were a club team beating other association’s National Teams!

We had nineteen competitors take part in the event and every single one came away with a medal of some sort, which is a tremendous achievement. We will be encouraging our better competitors to try out for the Karate England National Squad next year, the first session for which is on 10th January 2010 in Loughborough.