28 April 2008

Last weekend Carnalea karate students along with several hundred others from across Ireland were invited to Donegal for the Ulster Karate – Do Federation Invitation Tournament 2008.

After an intense day of kata, kumite and tag-team action, three golds were brought back to Bangor, together with some great individual performances.

The Carnalea superstar for the day had to be nine year old Sarah Shields who proved she is a kid not to be ignored... Sarah not only won her fighting event, hardly losing points in any round, but also missed out narrowly on third place in her kata event too.

Her team-mate Rhiannon wells claimed third in her fighting event and was placed sixth in her kata.

In the cadets, brothers Neil and Glen Bailie made the final of the brown and black belt kata event, but this time both narrowly missed out on getting in the medals up against superb performances from Strabane's Ciara Dullagan and her sister Emer.

However both brothers more than made up for this disappointment in the fighting events, by each winning gold in their respective categories.

In the senior kata event Ards brothers Kevin and Sam Lewis were placed third and fourth respectively behind Shotokan star Ethan O'Donnell and world kata finalist Leona McFadden. They were then invited by Dr Columba McLoughlin, to give a performance of their team kata together with their coach and team-mate David Brashaw, prior to competing at the forthcoming European Championships. Subsequently their kata performance was scored very well by five officials, including three world referees and got a well deserved round of applause from the watching athletes and spectators.

Coach Brashaw was very pleased with the results of the tournament, but even more pleased with the performances. He added “It was great to see so much quality coming through in our students, especially when we are winning medals in both disciplines. It is a good bench-mark of our preparation for the forthcoming WUKO Senior European and Junior World Championships.”