Worcester Comp
July the fifth, 7.00am and the Dokan karate squad are off to the city of Worcester for the Central England Karate Tournament to be held on the 6th. We had to set off extra early to avoid getting caught in the Tour De France road diversions. I am pleased we did as it gave us more time to spend mooching around and exploring Worcester.
The weather was dry and warm and most of us found ourselves in a beautiful pub beer garden on the side of the river Severn. I left some of the parents to enjoy a drink or two and headed off to find the venue for the competition the next day. Accompanied by a few kids we took the rowing boat ferry over the river and headed in what we thought was the right direction. But before finding the venue we found three play parks and spent a bit time on them. Then I saw a great pub in the centre of Cripplegate Park which was in an ideal location for all our children to enjoy themselves safely. I went and bought some Frisbees, a football and some cheap toys for the little ones to play with and this was where we spent the evening.
The Tournament.
We arrived early to try to get seats for all 55 of us close together, but need not have worried too much as the venue was enormous and new and unlike the dingy poorly lit Emirates arena this was bright, light and well air conditioned. For once seating was not a problem with over a 1,000 seats available, and at £10 a head to spectate you should expect a decent seat.
There were eight areas and as usual Stennet was handing out the finest medals and trophies on the circuit.
Our kata was outstanding on the day and we dominated the younger sections below 13 years. Teams and pairs is particularly difficult here with it being open grade only and below 15 years only. We entered four teams and managed one bronze, which when you looked at the opposition was still a good result.
Dokan gained 1st , 2nd and 3rd in the girls' 10 to 12 years kata section - we ended up knocking ourselves out on the way through the rounds! We also took 1st, and two 3rds in the same age kumite section.
We travelled to The Central England karate tournament knowing full well any medals here are hard come by. I even warned the students not to expect to much as this competition is one of Britain's toughest comps with all the top name associations in attendance.
This was one of the rare occasions when most things went right for us on the day. We finished with a medal tally of 8 gold medals, 7 silver medals and 15 bronze medals. This was enough to put Dokan on top of the medal table for the day and as we had to leave at 5.15 we missed the presentation of the enormous most successful club trophy, but the organiser has promised to send it out by currier.
Yet again, this year Dokan has topped another large tournament medal table. Even I am astonished at our success. As I have stated many times we are a small club surrounded by huge multi-club associations led by the countries leading sensei and we have come out on top again.
I certainly do not go to any competition with dreams of being the top club, I am too concerned with each individual that I have entered to give anything else much thought. Perhaps we will never have another year as successful as 2014 but we can try.
