| Continuing their domination on the English Karate Junior scene, England’s Southern Regional Junior Squad successfully retained the Junior Regional Title winning four out of the six team events contested against the
other two regions, Northern and Midlands. The annual challenge took place on Saturday 18th March 2006 at Ponds Forge, Sheffield and followed the England Karate Senior Championship’s first day’s events.
The Girls and Boys Team Kata categories were the opening events for these championships with the Girls team up first. Only two teams entered this event, the Northern Region and Southern Region. Northern were first to perform and produced
a good performance of their Kata and followed with another good demonstration of the Bunkai (application to the Kata). The Southern Girls performed a good Bassai-Dai but hadn’t had any time to practice a Bunkai and were duly disqualified handing the win to Northern.
The boys team consisting of Alex Sell along with Harry Cannon and Aaron John was the only boys team entered and so an instant gold was available and more importantly, maximum points for the Southern team. However, the
boys, like the girls before them, also hadn’t had time to put together a Bunkai only getting together to practice 30 minutes earlier. The coaches consulted the referees and judges as to whether the team would be allowed to compete but without the Bunkai the prospects looked
bleak. Amazingly, as this 20 minute discussion took place the boys put together the quickest Bunkai you could imagine. As the decision was made that without a Bunkai there could be no performance, the boys duly stepped forward to announce they were ready to perform both Kata and
Bunkai. The judges let them compete. Well, it wasn’t the most perfectly timed team Kata ever performed, more like the funniest, but when you’re doing Unshu with almost no practice it was always going to be a little off. It did make us chuckle though. Once the Kata had finished
the boys set off into the Bunkai performance. Considering the amount of time dedicated to creating this, it was a pretty amazing job. Once again timing could have been better but they amply demonstrated the Kata moves in the Bunkai. They received a huge cheer once completed and
were duly flagged as winners by the five judges (although I’m sure one didn’t even bother voting). The trio did themselves proud sorting out the Kata and Bunkai completely on their own to not only get the ball rolling for Southern, but also to retain the Boys Kata title won by
the squad last year with the boys team from Ishinryu competing then.
The Kumite team events were next to get underway with the Boys 12-13yrs and Girls 12-13yrs events taking place simultaneously. Each category was a round-robin contest between the three regions ensuring the teams had at least two matches
each. The Girls team went on to win their event with the Boys team doing well too to secure another win for the Southern team. The Girls 14-15yrs team saw then lose out in their round-robin match to Midlands with the Southern Region suffering their only team Kumite defeat of the
tournament. That left the boys 14-15yrs team with Shuhari-Kai’s Alex Sell as part of the team.
Against the Northern region first, James Witt was first up for the boys 14-15yrs team and won his match 3-0 scoring with a Jodan Mawashigeri. Up next was Alex Sell but Alex suffered a 1-0 loss. Although Alex was lively and
pushed forward, he didn’t settle into his fight couldn’t score against his opponent. Alex was very disappointed with his performance knowing he could and should have beaten his opponent but not on this occasion. Next up was Ben Broom who did do better and managed a
convincing win beating his opponent 5-1. Alex Little took to the mat next but went 4-0 down early on. With just 15 seconds left on the clock his opponent started holding and giving away penalties. Unfortunately the clock ran out before Alex could overturn the deficit
finally losing 4-3. The last competitor for the squad was Aaron John needing at least a draw to take the match. Although Aaron had a rough match, he fought well and took the win 3-0 securing victory for the team.
The Southern team's next opponents were Midlands. James Witt once again was first up for the team and James took an early 3-0. James's opponent soon levelled the scores scoring with his own Jodan Mawashigeri but James had
the final word scoring yet another Mawashigeri to win the match 6-3. Up next was Ben Broom in a team reshuffle. Ben had a close match and with the scores tied at 3-3 with 5 seconds left on the clock, Ben scored the decisive point to take victory. Harry Cannon now
had his shot as the team replacement for Alex Little. The match saw an amazing come-back by Harry as he trailed 5-1 with 16 seconds left on the clock. Harry out fought and out pointed his opponent in an explosive 15 seconds winning the match 6-5 in the dying seconds to take the
win. With Harry's win sealing victory for the team, both Alex Sell and Aaron John did not have to take any further part in the match.
Well done to all the Regions and especially Southern who maintained their dominance in this tournament. |