KUGB National Youth Championships 3rd July 2010

The LKA sent a group of 40 young Karateka to the KUGB Youth Championships at Chesterfield at the beginning of July.  As usual for the LKA at this event, we had a mixture of both experienced competitors and novices.  All in all we were very pleased with the results, winning three events, which surpassed our performance at the KUGB Nationals back in May.

First Gold medal went to KUGB National Champion Emelye O'Brien who took the Girls Kumite 10 & 11 Years old title.  Emelye never looked in touble in this event and took the win with a fine Jodan Mawashi Geri.  This has been an excellent start for Emelye with the LKA, winning two titles in her first two events.  Her next challenge is to be able to maintain that level of perfomance when she moves up a category later in the year....and obtain her Black Belt of course!

Next up was Holly Dickinson, herself becoming a regular medalist.  Holly won the girls Kumite Under 5'3'' event with two very fast dynamic punches.  This despite being given a rather bloody nose during her final fight.  Holly also took fourth place in the Girls Black Belt Kata event, showing her potential to become an excellent all-round competitor.

Our final winner was Hayden Steele who won the Boys Kumite 5'-5'5'' event.  In the semi-final he beat LKA team mate Adam Banks and then went on to win the final with a superb Ippon, gained with a Jodan Mawashi Geri. 

We had a number of other medalists including Kieran Tucker who improved on his Nationals performance by taking Silver in the Boys Kata Novice-4th Kyu category.  Well done to everyone who took part.

The full list of our medal winners is shown below:

Our full list of competitors was:

Nick Smith, Jordon Probst, Ryan Tucker, Andrew Lister, Stephen Brown, James Brown, Holly Dickinson, Tom Little, Josie Fishkin, Oliver Deane, Dan Martin, Ronan Cain, Hayden Steele, Tom Mitchell, Jed Dickinson, Ellie Hardman, Pat Cryer, Kate Lister, Sam Mitchell, Laura Mackintosh, David Lister, Jamie Horwell, Adam Banks, Emelye O'Brien, Connor Payne, Daniel Tremble, Callum Payne, Jamie Booth, Jude O'Brien, Nicola Williams, James Williams, Charlie Swift, Abraham Thomas, Jeevan Mulamoottil, Chavy Mtawali, Joe Bulmer, Matthew Guest, Ben Wharton, Dumile Sibanda and Kieran Tucker.