After a heavy night partying
the night before, a small squad of four from Shuhari-Kai travelled to Grundy Park Leisure Centre in Hertfordshire on Sunday 1st October 2006 for the B.I.K.O. Open Championships.
Luckily for us the venue is only about half an hour away but with the M25 shut we had to make a detour and find another alternative route which took us a little
longer than expected and then only arriving with about 15 minutes spare to get ready.
On arriving at the venue the squad felt tired but they then saw some familiar faces and got down to some warming up.
Callum Alboni was our first competitor up. Callum took part in the 9 years and under category and performed an excellent Pinan Nidan kata and
scored 6.7, 6.8, and 6.9. Totaling 20.4, but with quite a few black belts performing higher grade kata’s this left Callum out of the medals. Nevertheless Callum performed his kata with great enthusiasm and if he had been up against people his own grade (6th
kyu) things may have been a lot different.
Jodie Miles and Sophie Roberts were next up, competing in the same category with another 49 students. Jodie was up first and decided to
perform seipai kata and scored 7.5, 7.6, and 7.3 totaling 22.4. Sophie was next up and performed Annan kata. Sophie scored 7.4, 7.5, and 7.3, totalling 22.2. After waiting for everyone else to finish the scores were checked and Jodie was in joint 2nd
place and Sophie was in joint 4th place, but both had secured a place in the final. Jodie going again first decided to give unshu a go and scored a total of 22.4. Sophie also decided to perform unshu but with a spectacular jump she nipped in
front of Jodie with a total of 22.7 which was enough to put her in joint 3rd place, but with only one medal being given for third Sophie had to perform another kata, this time she chose Seipai and scored a total of 22.8 beating her opponent by 0.5
points giving her the bronze medal and Shuhari-Kai’s first medal of the day.
Kumite was next and after a lot of hanging around Callum was called to the mat. Yet again Callum was in the 9 years and under, 4’2” and below
category, but up against the same black belt opponents as in the kata section Callum came out throwing punch after punch and kick after kick but with only having two gyak’s scored in his favour he lost out in the end 4 points to 2 to the eventual winner of his
section.
Our next competitor was Terry Moorton. Terry is fairly new to the competition circuit but still showed great determination going into the boy’s 10
to 12 over 5’0” section. Terry was drawn against a black belt in his first round who had obviously had a lot more experience than him as he went on to win the category, but Terry didn’t back off and tried the best he could to try and score with some gyak’s. The
match finished with Terry losing 4 points to 0. Well done Terry and keep trying.
Yet again after another long wait Jodie was called to the mat, with Jodie receiving a first round bye (I didn’t know you changed your name!). She
was then called again this time up against an opponent much heavier but Jodie kept her on her toes and scored gyak after gyak and won her match 8 points to 1. In the next round she had a competitor who was very good but with the judging being down as shadow judging
the main ref didn’t respect the shadow judges decisions who awarded Jodie at least 3 gyak’s but was wiped out by the main ref, and also receiving a kick to the mouth and losing her gum shield with no warning being given to the other competitor she finally lost out in the
last 2 seconds as her opponents gyak was awarded as being first, but Jodie did pick up a bronze medal for all her efforts which was the second of the day for Shuhari-Kai.
Our last competitor up was Sophie. Her category was girls 13 to 15 years over 5’3”.
Sophie was selected in the top half of the draw with 15 other competitors the bottom half of the draw had only 5 competitors in it, but with being on the
same mat as Jodie the main ref decided the draw would stand as it was put and not changed to make it more fair as some of the competitors in the top half had 3 fights and some of the bottom half had 3 byes. Sophie was the competitor who had a bye in the first
round, her second round saw her take to the mat and win the match 3 points to 0. Her next fight was a lot tougher and she finally lost the match by 1 point in the final few seconds with the score at the end being 5 points to 4.
All in all it went quite well even though the girls had a lot in there category’s and Shuhari-kai came away with two bronze medals.
Squad: Callum Alboni, Jodie Miles, Terry Moorton, Sophie Roberts.
