New Secretary!!!

As you may already know, our previous secretary, Laura Mason had to resign from her position of secretary due to some reasons, so we were short of a committee member. On our final session of the term, 16th of December, we held the elections for the position of secretary and Fatma Salahioglu was elected to be part of the Karate Club committee. As the existing committee members, we would like to cangratulate and welcome Fatma to our committee.

Grading and the Christmas Meal

The first grading of the year is finally here. Excited?
The grading will take place on Friday, the 11th of December. The session will be 3 hours rather than the usual 2 hours, from 6:00-9:00pm. It will start in the Main Hall as usual and then we will move to the Dance Studio at 7:00pm. Please make sure that you DO NOT come late to this session!!!

On Saturday, the 12th of December, we will be having our annual Christmas Meal in Cafe de China. This will also be a celebration for the grading and two prizes will be given. They will be for the most committing white belt and the most progressed karate-ka. There will also be a Christmas raffle.
We will be meeting at 7:00pm in Cafe de China, there will be a table booked for us. All those that do not know where that is, the address for the Cafe de China is 5-6 St. Georges Place which is opposite Planet Lazer and Chill. For those that have never been there, the food is £16 per person, all you can eat, excluding the drinks. We shall be buying the drinks from the bar to not to have a confusion when we pay the bill after the dinner.

Club Hoodies & T-shirts

Now that the gis are sorted out, it is time to order the club hoodies and the t-shirts. We will be collecting the orders starting from Monday the 9th of November in the Mandela Building. There will be a sign up sheet there, please state the type and the size of the product you want and the name you want to be put on your hoodie. Please note that you will need to do the payment in advance (when you state your size and put your name down in the Mandela Building).

Here are the clothing options you have and their prices:
Normal hoodies - £20
Zipped hoodies - £25
Female cut t-shirts - £15
Male cut t-shirts - £15

New Social Secretary!!!

As some of you may already know, our Social Secretary, Patrick Radbourne, of this year had to have a year out from the university for personal reasons and we were short of a committee member. Yesterday (23/10/2009) we finally had the election for the new Social Secretary and we are pleased to announce that Nicholas Shearon has joined our committee as the new Social Secretary. We, the current committee, would like to congratulate and welcome him to his position.

Karate Club's Schedule for the Firts Two Weeks

Here are some dates to look forward to:

• Wednesday, 23/September/2009 -- 1:00 - 2:00pm -- Sports Taster Day in the Main Sports Hall in the Sports Centre
• Friday, 25/September/2009 -- 12:00 - 5:00pm -- Freshers Fayre, Sports Fair
• Friday, 25/September/2009 -- 9:00 - 9:15pm & 11:40 - 11:55pm -- Clubs and Societies Showcase in Darwin Origins Bar
• Wednesday, 30/September/2009 -- 6:00 - 8:00pm -- the First Training Session in the Main Sports Hall in the Sports Centre
• Friday, 2/October/2009 -- 6:00 - 7:00pm -- Main Sports Hall -- 7:00 - 8:00pm -- Dance Studio, the Second Training Session
• Saturday, 3/October/2009 -- 10:00am - 12:00pm -- the first Kobudo (weaponry) class in the Main Sports Hall in the Sports Centre
• Saturday, 3/October/2oo9 -- 7:oopm - 1:00am -- Club's first social, Karate Belt Crawl, meeting in front of the Venue

You can come to the first two weeks of the trainings free of charge.

Wonderful Success at the EUSA Karate Championships

As it had allready been announced, European Universities Sports Association (EUSA) Karate Championship took place from 16.7.2009 - 19.7.2009. EUSA Karate Championships take place once in every two years and the attendance and getting involved in the British Team is determined by the students' performance at the BUCS championship. This year, 74 universities from 14 countries participated in the EUSA Karate Championships which took place in Cordoba, Spain. Our Team Captain, Mohammad Reza had the previledge to participate both in Senior Kumite Under 67kg and was chosen to participate in the Team Kumite. At his category Mohammad managed to get the 6th position, but in Team Kumite, he became one of the reasons of a wonderful Bronze Medal and brought another glorius victory to the successful history of the University of Kent Karate Club.

Kobudo Lessons by Sensei Chris Barron

Another good news to our members. One of our old sensei and student of the University of Kent Karate Club, Sensei Chris Barron, agreed to join our trainings and teach us weaponry (kobudo) such as; bo staff, nunchaku, tonfa, sai, etc. We would like to say welcome back to our Sensei and wish all our members enjoyable sessions. From the beginning of the next academic term onwards, Sensei will teach on Saturdays, from 10am-12pm in the Main Sports Hall.

European University Sports Championships!!!

Hello Everyone. So, due to his success in BUCS, our Male Team Captin, Mohammad, was invited to participate in the European University Sports Championship. There is exactly 9 days left (16.7.2009 - 19.7.2009) before Mohammad goes to Cordoba to represent and honour our University and our club throughout Europe. From here, on behalf of our Committee, I would like to wish him the best of luck and ask your support to him. We hope to have him return with another gold medal.

Here you can see the website for this organisation: http://www.eusa.eu/

New committee...

Ok, so the time has passed very quickly this term and so it has come the time where we switch over to the new cttee, who were elected a few weeks ago. My thanks go out to last years cttee who helped keep this club together, particularly Deniz who almost single handedly organised BUCS.

I would also like to thank Patrick for taking on the role of secretary when Kenji left us.
Finally I hope that I have been able to keep the club going in a positive direction this year, depite my lack of involvement over the last term due to my workload, and i wish Deniz the best of luck next year.

The new Cttee now stands:

President: Deniz
Secretary: Laura
Treasurer: Shoyeb.

Male Team captian: Mohammad
Female Team captain: Maddie
Social Secretary: Patrick


Good luck.

Spring Term.

It's been a while since i've gotten around to updating this site due to the prohibitive level of work i've encountered this term so far, and everyone else seems to have been in the same boat.

The major event this term was held a few weeks ago; the BUCS Championship in Sheffield which we sent a small but determined team to, who also succeeded in bringing back a gold medal, thanks to Mohammad, our team captain.

Read the Inquire article here: http://www.inquirelive.co.uk/node/1552

Go read.

End of Term/Christmas meal.

We got together, ate too much chinese, drank too little but had a damn good time. We marked the end of the term by awarding our members who we deemed to have improved the most, as well as thanking our long suffering sensei.

The award for most promising beginner went to Laura Mason, for showing up to almost every session without fail and having a positive attitude throughout.

The award for best higher grade went to another first year, Patrick Radbourne. Again this was for his presence at almost every training session and a constantly bright attitude towards karate and the club.

Heres some pics.

December Grading

On the penultimate week of term we held our first grading of the year, this was an opportunity for everyone to demonstrate how much they had accomplished over the course of the year so far and to be rewarded appropriately.

Almost everyone who attended managed to get to the next grade, with a few even showing enough prowess to skip a level.

We congratulate everyones achievement anyway and anticipate thier performace next term.

Pictures.

Belt crawl.

This is a bit of a delayed posting, but the belt crawl social went ahead towards the end of the last term and was pretty good fun.

The belt crawl has become a popular part of the karate clubs calendar and a tradition maintained for several generations of our karateka, for anyone unsure of the rules:

Participants must dress in a top the same colour as thier belt. Once gathered we proceed through various different pubs drinking as we go, however shots are taken at each pub in belt colour order. There are various other challenges, we complete sets of pressups or perform kata in the highstreet and people not wearing the correct colour suffer a forfeit.
Suffice to say not that many people make it to the final black shot (jaegermeister).

Here are pictures.