Dokan Karate Club

THE CENTRAL ENGLISH INTERNATIONAL OCTOBER 2018.

The largest central English international to date and the smallest Dokan squad ever to attend a Stennet ran tournament. We entered 6 Elite squad girls and a younger sister.

I organised this comp on a whim, I wanted some quality opposition and knew it would be there in abundance. A minibus was hired, and I drove there and back. En route to Worcester we had a 40-minute break at Xscape for some ten-pin bowling to cut the journey in half. We eventually arrived after driving through Hurricane Callum just before 6.00 with just enough time to change and make the pre-booked Italian restaurant for dinner. The restaurant was lovely, the city itself is nice and drive down despite being blown all over the road went smoothly.

The morning of the comp started badly with a walk through the rain to find a parking ticket on the minibus. I had an ominous feeling my run of bad luck was not yet finished. I was right too.

10 to 13 years team kata and a discrepancy in the rules sees the best team entered (us) disqualified in the second round. Here we go again….

The amount of bad decisions I saw throughout the day truly disheartened me. Split decisions all day went against us as the more highly qualified refs generally went the right way but the truth is it was just what I have come to expect.

Kumite faired no better, the amount of head kicks missed on two of our areas was laughable if only I could have summed up a laugh. But I was not seeing the funny side of much. We finished the day with Lola Cassidy winning the open weight kumite. This is Lola’s best win of the year and prior to starting the section I told her to concentrate on punches only as the kicks were not scoring. It worked far better than I anticipated, and sort of finished the day on a high.

The girls themselves all performed well. I was disappointed with none of them, they all gave it 100%. Katie Hunnam taking a kumite bronze showed yet again what a tricky fighter she is. Emma performed well to in kata, Eleisha and Eve carried zero luck. Lola had a fantastic day culminating in her open weight victory.

Medal tally 6 silver, 5 bronze, one gold and a parking ticket.

• Worcester city dive pub. Worcester city dive pub.
• Minibus and parking fine Minibus and parking fine
• Katie Hunnam 3rd kumite Katie Hunnam 3rd kumite
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