Nintai Students results: The Dingman Cup

Nintai Dojo is run by myself and Jason White, We often brag to each other about how great our students are in class and I chat with him a great deal about how awesome they do in class. Jason teaches the Monday nights and I take up the Thursdays and Saturday classes. One of the secrets to our teaching is we DON’T share with each other what we are going to be teaching. To me this is the best way of teaching because it gives the students variety. I don’t like when you have a congruent teaching group that focuses on the day to day teaching and does the same thing every day! However, we did sort of work with each other to get our students ready for the “Dingman Cup Tournament” held this past June 1^st.

Our little Dojo has about 20 active members in the club and we made a concerted effort to get our students ready for the event and the students put the hard work in and did a bunch of conditioning on top of the regular focus on good technical training. We are a super traditional Dojo that focuses on improving our students Karate on a technical level, we don’t often do tournaments and we don’t teach sport Karate, the JKAMB prides itself on being traditional Karate and using Traditional Karate even in our tournaments.

Our members did extremely well and one of our students even took the Dingman Cup for best all around athlete of the event. Jennifer has been training with us for several years and has her 1^st Kyu brown belt and is preparing for her Shodan. She is a hardworking, funny kid that is faster than lightning. Her hard work earned her gold in both Kata and Kumite! While I bug her about her Kata her Kumite is so good she beat kids that were her rank and made them look like they were standing still!  She blew past several athletes from other clubs with so much ease that next year I will have to put her in the black belt division or it wont be fair.

Our other brown belt Emma is a 3^rd Kyu and came in 4^th in Kata to someone who has been a brown belt longer than Emma has been training and honestly, I thought she took that one. She also got her bronze in Kumite proving her length and timing was on point!  I can see great things for Emma and with a bit of training she will be beating seniors soon! When she first got her brown belt we noticed a huge jump in her skill level and I thought she would be a champion at Kata because she is super intelligent and has awesome attention to detail, she has however shocked me in that her Kumite is better than I expected! She proved to me and Jason that her skills in fighting are part of her being so smart as she plays chess with people when sparring and uses great strategy to win.

For fun we threw our Black belt Terry into the Adult female Kata division, this year she could not do Kumite as she had a broken finger, but she came down and did her Kata and garnered a silver medal. The ironic part is she just started learning Empi a few months back and has a way to go but her determination and practice earned her the medal this time out. She is normally the work horse that goes into Kumite and relishes it in class as much as she does at the tournament. She pushes herself harder than any of the younger Karateka in the club and earned my respect a long time ago. She fought members from other clubs and earned the silver she got!

Damon and his sister Rayna both did very well as well. Damon entered the Kata and Kumite and earned a bronze for his Kata, which is not normally his strong suit in class. He however earned a Silver in a deep division for kumite and I was very impressed with his form when sparring, he will be a force when he grows a bit and figures out his technical points. He is a natural athlete and has explosive strength when he wants to. His sister Rayna is what we would call a “thinker” and often an over thinker. She was in a smaller division and psyched herself out, but after a bit of a chat she went into the Kumite division and got a silver!  Rayna is one of the smartest kids I know, and she is probably the one that has the most medically to overcome, but she pushes when you get her in the right mood and shows some sparks of brilliance in Kata and her kumite, if pushed is on point as well. I really look forwards to what these two purple belts will do when they both grow into their bodies a bit and have time to mature in Karate.

Two of our Novice (white to Green) students did very well in a HUGE division. Patrick and CJ came in Gold and Bronze in Kumite respectively and Patrick really shocked me. He was one of the smaller kids in the division and stepped up big time. He is one of those kids that has great form, works hard and has fun. Patrick is one of those kids that 99% of the time you dream of having in your class and he listens to you 100% of the time. Young kid with a bright future in Karate!  CJ is our Tasmanian Devil. The kid is so much fun and he works really hard but he is a wild card. He shows up and you never know whats gonna happen. AND he is really good when he tries and pushes others to do well.  His kumite is great because he is one of the fearless kids. The ones that you know will go hard and not be scared of anything in Kumite. He does not mind getting hit a bit and he will drive in all the time. We need to work on his form but he is on point to be really good at Karate too.

Last but not least is Qetsu, one of our advanced (Brown) Cadets (teens) who is built like a tank! The kid is solid and hits like a mule! He is not the quickest, but he is super coachable. He was so nervous doing free against brown belts, but he earned his gold with hard nosed Karate. He chased a kid out of bounds three times and got him DQ’d and then beat two others with solid form and power. His in class Karate is normally typical teen, you don’t know if he is trying or just goofing off a bit and often it’s a bit of both, but he buckles down, and you see him when he is doing things he likes and the power he can generate is awesome. I will be working on speed and explosiveness with him, but this big rig of a kid is going to be something when he gets a bit more explosiveness into his Karate.

Jason and I could not be prouder of our members. They all did so good in their respective divisions and we know that it’s a growing time for us, we are focusing more and more on traditional tournament prep and training and we hope to help our members do even better in the future.  Our focus as always will be doing JKA Style Shotokan in the Dojo with the students and pushing them to be better, reach their potentials and enjoy Karate, but we also want to encourage them to push themselves out of their comfort zones, which is what tournaments are all about…fun and adding pressure to your training.

Our new group of students that did not compete also got an eyeful of the tournament and we have several who are interested in doing the next one as well as our regular membership. Tournaments in our organization are traditional and go hand in hand with Dojo training, they don’t shift to sport and change your style, they push you to build, be better and improve over all in Karate. It’s a physical training event and not what we normally focus on teaching, but it does help in teaching students how to be better sportsmen/women and how to train to be better in general.

We are so proud of those that competed, and we know that all our members will benefit going forwards from training for traditional tournaments. It’s the results we care about, not the medals but the leap in understanding and training we see in our students.