On a miserable rainy day last Saturday, Tekki took a party of keen competitors to Flint in North Wales to take part in the annual Celyn club karate competition. As usual, we took most of the competitors on a mini bus – because Sensei says that it’s character building. That’s probably why he went in his car, with leather seats and air con…..
Anyway, we trusted Elin to do the route planning, and so we ended up on a magical mystery tour of mid- and north Wales, basically doing a big superman style ‘S’ shape across the Wales. It’s very possible that she found some roads that weren’t even on the map.
The competition started late, but that’s normal. The eliminations finally got started at about 10.30 a.m. with the ippon kumite. Despite the competition being hard, everyone pushed themselves and performed very well with some of tekki’s finest winning their way through to the evening finals. Special mention to Adam, who got to the final of the kumite by blocking a punch with his face and so getting his opponent disqualified. Great tactics, but maybe need some rethinking for the nationals!
Perhaps the overall winner of the day though was the leisure centre canteen, which made an absolute fortune from tired and hungry parents.
So, after the eliminations were over, the finals got underway at about 4 p.m. Plenty of involvement from Tekki here and, as usual plenty of success as well. The problem is (especially for some of the junior ladies) that when you win a medal you have to have your photo taken for the website. Getting blood from a stone would be easier than getting some of our members to smile.
Mid-way through the finals, we were treated to some fine performances of kata in the veterans’ kata category by some of the KUGB’s senior instructors, who for most of the day had been judging the competition. Full credit to Keith Barron, who did a great Heian Yondan and competed with great spirit.
It’s worth pointing out that the hall was possibly the hottest place in the world during the competition and most of us had sweated out almost half our body weight by the time the finals had finished. Perhaps the competition should be renamed to the “Diet Celyn Competition” in future years.
Written by Andrew Jones