27 April 2007

Carnalea Karate Club once again proved their class at last weekend’s North West Open Karate Championships. The event which was held in Donegal, attracted some 400 competitors from across Ireland.

Star of the day was young Sarah Shields from Bangor. Sarah had the worst possible draw in her kata event, having to go first yet still managed to claim the bronze medal. However in the sparring category she not only excelled but went on to claim her first big tournament gold medal, narrowly beating her Carnalea team-mate Sophie Stewart in the final. Alongside Rhiannon Wells and GT Wright in the under 13 years team kata event they narrowly missed out on a medal finishing in fourth place. Still, this was a great performance, considering their average age of the Carnalea team was ten years of age.

GT and Rhiannon both had very spirited fighting performances in their respective kumite events against very strong fighters. Also in the medals was young Conor Porter who won a superb silver in sparring and a bronze for his kata.

In the teens age groups Levi Kane was unlucky not to make the medals in sparring where she came fourth and also produced her best competition performance of Pinan Nidan kata.

As expected, Junior world championships stars, Neil & Glen Bailie and Claire McPeake came home again with a clutch of medals. Despite a foot injury, Neil still was good enough for a silver in the kata competition. Glen collected silver in both sparring and kata, only losing in extra time, first to score in the final of the sparring. Claire demonstrated why she is so highly regarded in international competition by winning her kata event and coming second in her sparring.

Former Regent House pupil and current double World Karate Kata Champion David Brashaw, along with brothers Sam and Kevin Lewis were delighted when they lifted the team kata title, just ahead of the stylish SKU Shotokan team from Strabane. In the individual men’s kata event, David secured gold with Kevin and Sam coming second and forth respectively.

Coach David commented “Having never competed in team kata before, about eight months ago I thought this would be a new and exciting challenge and a chance to raise the bar for Wado-Ryu team kata performance for Northern Ireland. So being aware of both Sam and Kevin’s past international experience in kumite, we set out to achieve this. With the fantastic support of Ulster Karate Council National coach Jeff Hillis, and Ards Borough Leisure Services we have committed the last six months training to fulfil this ambition.

I cannot start to say how proud the club is of Sam and Kevin and their superb development in this very challenging discipline over the last number of months.”

Overall it was a superb day of competition and results for the club. Much thanks must also go to the families of the team for help with transport and their support.