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 Adults Squad along to give the event a try and a very good effort they made.
Starting the days success off 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 event in which we had all four medalists. Mark Hardy and Tom Little both fought well to take joint 3rd place each. Nick Smith was outpointed 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 Mel Finlay taking third place in the same event.
Our Veterans didn't fare too badly either with Daryn Hobden and Brian Lister taking 2nd and 3rd 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 win over Shikon in the final. We were pleased not only with the manner of the victory, which was decisive, but also the fact that we were a club team beating other associations national teams!
We had 19 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.
The full list of our results were:
| Male Team Kumite Sanbon | 1st | Sam Goulden, Joe Hart, Ryan Tucker and Tom Little |
| Senior Male Kumite Over 78Kg | 1st | Sam Goulden |
| Senior Male Open Kata | 1st | Glenn Riley |
| Junior Male Kumite | 1st | Ryan Tucker |
| Senior Female Kumite | 2nd | Ashley Scott |
| Senior Male Kumite Under 78Kg | 2nd | Joe Hart |
| Male Veterans Kumite | 2nd | Daryn Hobden |
| Junior Male Kumite | 2nd | Nick Smith |
| Cadet Open Kata | 2nd | Jordon Probst |
| Female Team Kumite Sanbon | 2nd | Ashley Scott, Mel Finlay, Abi Chapman and Josie Fishkin |
| Junior Male Kumite | 3rd | Mark Hardy and Tom Little |
| Male Veteran Kumite | 3rd | Brian Lister |
| Junior Female Kumite | 3rd | Mel Finlay |
| Cadet Female Kumite | 3rd | Abi Chapman |
| Cadet Male Kumite Under 70Kg | 3rd | James Hill |
| Female Team Kumite Rotation | 3rd | Ashley Scott, Mel Finlay, Abi Chapman and Josie Fishkin |
| Male Cadet Team Kumite Rotation | 3rd | Andrew Lister, Andrew Cryer and Stephen Brown |
| Male Cadet Team Kumite Sanbon | 3rd | Andrew Lister, Andrew Cryer and Pat Cryer |
The full list of our competitors was:
Glenn Riley, Ashley Scott, Daryn Hobden, Nick Smith, Jordon Probst, Ryan Tucker, Mel Finlay, Brian Lister, Andrew Lister, Joe Hart, Stephen Brown, Sam Goulden, Tom Little, James Hill, Mark Hardy, Josie Fishkin, Abi Chapman, Andrew Cryer and Pat Cryer.