Hartlepool Wadokai End of Year Course & Christmas Party (Bonenkai)
Saturday 14th December
Dojo HQ: 126 Whitby Street South, Hartlepool, TS24 7LP
We’ve adopted the Shiramizu Dojo / Japanese tradition of having a ‘forget the year’ party or Bonenkai each December. The Christmas party at our club is always preceded by a free end of year training course where we carry out another Shiramizu tradition – everyone performs 1000 punches! (Last year we also did 1000 kicks but this nearly broke the seniors so we didn’t do it this year!). The course is always a great chance for students who attend different classes throughout the week to get together as one group.
After the hard training session we quickly set up for the Christmas party. We had another great disco from Nick & George – thanks very much guys. We also had a ‘best decorated Christmas cake’ competition. Here are the entries:
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- delicious…
December club grading
Saturday 7th & Sunday 8th December 2013
Dojo HQ: 126 Whitby Street South, Hartlepool, TS24 7LP
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- Little Ninja’s
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- Awesome Ninja’s
This was a really busy weekend for the club with student’s from 3 years upwards training and grading. The little ninja’s trained and graded over a 2 hour period – a long time considering how young they are! The younger/lower grade students trained for 3 hours on the Saturday going over the finer details of their grade. The actual test was done after the training. Higher grades completed 6 hours training over the two days and done their test on the Sunday afternoon.
There were some great performances, in particular the Little Ninja’s – they’re going to be Karate superstars if they stick in!!!
Congratulations to the following:
Little Ninjas – White & Red Belt
Jacob
Emily
Eve
Zack
Kezia
Liam
Ruby
Zak
Daniel
Oliver B
Oliver TD
9th Kyu – Red Belt
Pennie Carter
Joshua Reid
Damia Saracut
Lucy Carter
Jake Orley
Yellow & White Belt
Harrison O’Keefe
8th Kyu – Yellow Belt
Henry Nixon
Matthew Cain
India Clark
7th Kyu – Orange Belt
Dominic Cox
Daniel Shaw
Paul Weaton
Green & White Belt
Sashenka Lindridge
Megan Spires
6th Kyu – Green Belt
Tyler Vaughan
Connor Shepherd
Neil Codner
Blue & White Belt
Mollie Cooper
5th Kyu – Blue Belt
Joseph Flounders
Oliver Fraser
Christian Glover
4th Kyu – Purple Belt
Daniel Spires
3rd Kyu – Brown Belt
Harvey Kerridge
2nd Kyu – Brown Belt
Joe Hind
The next grading weekend is planned for 8th & 9th February 2014.
Hartlepool Wadokai Beginners Championships
Sunday 24th November 2013
Dojo HQ: 126 Whitby Street South, Hartlepool, TS24 7LP
The club recently organised a small club only competition exclusively for our beginners. We’ve done this a few times over recent years and it’s a great way to get people to try Karate competition for the first time. As usual in this event, we have our higher grade juniors and assistant instructors helping to judge. This is great because the beginners are more relaxed (rather than having a formal affair with judges in blazers etc…) and our up and coming instructors get some great experience – some of these will be starting to attend the English Karate Federation referee training in 2014 to qualify as national judges.
The club always has great support from parents and volunteers but at this competition we actually had more officials than competitors – definitely a first for the club! Thank you to the officials/volunteers and the parents and competitors who supported the event.
Sensei Amy was particularly impressed with some of the fighters at the competition with one or two being pre-selected for the Hartlepool squad launching next year. Full results can be downloaded here.
December @ Hartlepool Wadokai Karate Club
December schedule for Hartlepool Wadokai Karate club
December is another action packed month for the Hartlepool Wadokai Karate club with a grading weekend, a FREE end of year training course, kids Christmas party, adult Christmas meal & social, Child free shopping day, a club technical committee meeting & a regular committee meeting too.
7th & 8th December – Hartlepool Wadokai club grading (full details available from the club)
14th December – FREE end of year training course (full details available from the club)
14th December – club Christmas party (tickets available now, £3 each or £10 family ticket)
21st December – adult Christmas meal & social
23rd December – Child free shopping day (full details available from the club)
Christmas & New Year opening times
The classes will be merged and will be a great opportunity for the younger students to train with the older/higher grade ones, whilst the older students will be able to mentor the younger ones and start teaching.
The following schedule has been agreed:
Monday 23rd December
Kids Beginners & Family Class 5-6pm
Tuesday 24th December
No classes
Wednesday 25th December
No classes
Friday 27th December
Kids Beginners 5-6pm
Kids Intermediate & Advanced/Adults 6-7pm
Saturday 28th December
Little Ninjas (3-7yrs) 9.30-10am (all the Little Ninjas are able to attend this session instead of their usual class this week)
Kids Beginners & Family Class 10.30-11.30am
Monday 30th December
Kids Beginners & Family Class 5-6pm
Tuesday 31st December
No classes
Wednesday 1st January 2014
No classes
Friday 3rd January 2014
Full class schedule returns as normal
Hartlepool Wadokai Halloween Party 2013
On Halloween the club held an erm… Halloween Party, in our shiny new Dojo HQ. A lot of the mats were cleared away, tables & chairs set up and scary decorations were superglued/blue tacked/pinned/nailed/sellotaped to the shiny walls of the pristine/immaculate white walls (Can you tell Carl was a little concerned about this?).
We had a staggering 200 people turn up for the party which made this one of the biggest club-only events we’ve ever held. It was massive success with most people getting dressed up with some great costumes and 60 entries into the pumpkin carving competition! As always, George & Nick did a great job with the disco, and also Lynne & co with the catering/decorating – all made the night a success. Thank you to everyone who came along, the next party will be our Kids Christmas Party – December 14th, tickets available now!
Hartlepool Wadokai Team Kumite Championships
Sunday 13th October 2013 – Dojo HQ, 126 Whitby Street South, Hartlepool, TS24 7LP
Yesterday we held our first Karate competition at our new Dojo HQ. This was a Team Kumite (fighting) competition. The event was a low-key affair and only for our club – we wanted to see how our shiny new Dojo HQ would handle a lot of people in at once whilst also giving our students the chance to get some competitive ‘mat-time’.
All in all I’d say the event was successful, with 21 competitors – some of whom had never entered a Karate competition before!
The competition was open to all of our students, and we simply created the teams to try and make them as fair and balanced as possible using ‘9 years & under’, ’10 – 12 years’ and ’13 years +’ as the age splits. Each team was made up of at least one person from each age group and competitors only fought against opponents of the same age, just in a team format. Some teams had five fighters, and others just four. Those without a full compliment selected one of the 9 years & under fighters to compete twice (Fighter 4) each round. The breakdown was as follows:
Fighter 1 – 9 years & under
Fighter 2 – 10 – 12 years
Fighter 3 – 9 years & under
Fighter 4 – 9 years & under
Fighter 5 – 13 years & above
The event only had five teams so trophies were awarded for 1st, 2nd and 3rd place only. 3rd place was fought for by the two teams who lost to the finalists (Team 1 & Team 3).
Teams
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- Team 1 – Conor (Captain), Will, Leyton, Olivia
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- Team 2 – Harvey (Captain); Tyler, Joe, Hannah
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- Team 3 – Bailey (Captain); Joe, Jacob, Jack
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- Team 4 – Lewis (Captain); Harry, Libby, Sam, Matthew
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- Tean 5 – Danny Boy (Captain); Esta, Diego, Oakley
Results
There were some great, very close matches with quite a few finishing as a tie. Some team matches went right down to the final seconds of the last fight to decide the outcome. It was good to see the teams working together and the different captains leading their teams in different ways, from a different warm-up, different team talk and different words of encouragement when their fighters were up. Well done.
Unfortunately, not everyone can win but a huge congratulations to those that did. The results are:
1st Place – Team 2 (Harvey, Tyler, Joe, Hannah)
2nd Place – Team 5 (Daniel, Esta, Diego, Oakley)
3rd Place – Team 1 (Conor, Will, Leyton, Olivia)
I’d like to thank Sensei Lynne, Michael, Amy and Beth, and Sempai Roy for helping me with the judging. And a big thanks to Sue for running the table on her own – a difficult job at the best of times, but perhaps more so for team events. Also a big thanks for the competitors, parents and cheer leaders for coming along and supporting the fighters and the club.
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- Tean 5 – Danny Boy (Captain); Esta, Diego, Oakley
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- Team 4 – Lewis (Captain); Harry, Libby, Sam, Matthew
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- Team 3 – Bailey (Captain); Joe, Jacob, Jack
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- Team 2 – Harvey (Captain); Tyler, Joe, Hannah
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- Team 1 – Conor (Captain), Will, Leyton, Olivia
There are a number of competitions coming up over the next few months, including a planned club-only beginners championships next month, please speak to one of the instructors for more information.
Half Term Family Fun – Hartlepool Borough Council
Hartlepool Borough Council’s Adult Education department have a load of activities on offer over the coming months. Amy and Carl recently took part in one of their activities at Old Boys Rugby Club, they made a paper Pirate hat for their son Perrin (see below). This was such a simple idea but was great to get a big crowd of kids (& parents) involved.
All of the activities are completely FREE, but advanced booking is necessary. Click on the following links to download the event flyers: Saturdays at Summerhill – flyer – 2013-14 (1) & Half Term Activities – Oct-Nov 2013 (1)
Dissertation
Carl has recently returned to Teesside University to complete the final 40 credits of his Bsc (Hons) Applied Sport & Exercise Science Degree. These credits are achieved by handing in a 10,000 word dissertation on a research subject of choice, to be handed in around Christmas time.
Carl’s research project will analyse a number of final bouts of elite level (WKF Karate1 Premier League & WKF World Championships) Kumite (Fighting) matches. The scoring frequencies and technique choice will be analysed with the final report contributing in a small way to the limited body of research on the latest WKF Karate competition rules and their application.
The title is: ‘Notational analysis of scoring techniques used in Karate competition’.
The dissertation is obviously highly relevant to the club and the wider Karate world. More than that though, this will be a great opportunity to be immersed once more in the latest cutting edge research in the Martial Arts world. Then of course, all this new knowledge will be brought back to the club and filtered down to our students.
