RTK Elite Kata Squad Compete in Venice

We are so proud of these three RTK students who travelled to Venice earlier this month to compete against the very best young athletes in the WKF.

Grace Baron, Jaime Pratley and Izzy Baron performed some excellent Katas and should be exteremly pleased with the progress they have made this year. They have all improved their scores and Grace managed to get through to the second round and narrowly missed out on the third round. She is the only English Female Shotokan competitor to make it this far in WKF competition in the last decade! Amazing work all three of you. It’s all a work in progress, you will get there perfecting one Kata at a time!

You can hold your heads up high, because you are COURAGEOUS enough to try. You have put in a tremendous amount of time and effort both individually with your gym work and as a team in the dojo.

Mike Baron Sensei & Michelle Baron, Gary Pratley Sensei, Paul Wolstencroft Sensei and Rob Head Sensei travelled with them and offered their support. It was also a special event for Mike Sensei who has completed his WKF coaching certificates and was able to coach our competitors on the mats. Mike Sensei joins Paul Wolstencroft Sensei as our second fully qualified and accredited WKF coach. This can only help lift the quality of coaching and the standard of all our competitors in our Club. Amazing!

Mike Sensei made the following comments:

“Home from Jesolo after an amazing, very proud week coaching our three athletes.

There is no way I can explain what Grace, Jaime Pratley and Izzy have put themselves through, stepping up on to such a high level arena. The pressure they must have felt first in warm up area one and then move through to warm up area two is something that isn’t for the faint hearted, and then to have your name called and to walk through the WKF curtains in to a packed arena to perform your kata with hundreds watching you, is something they should be very proud of themselves.

These three went up against the very best young kata athletes in the world and did themselves and Red Tiger very proud. I want to start by saying most of the athletes in these competitions only do kata, day in day out, no kumite, no teaching, not even grading. Our three athletes train in all these areas every week along side you along with teaching also.

Izzy went in to the first round containing 128 other athletes and did an amazing kata, strong performance, possibly the strongest in her pool, but we know what we need to work and and she’s determined to work hard.

Jaime has put so much in to his kata and missed out on going through to round two by just .1 of a point. His kata was sharp, powerful and as good as any in his pool but again we know what what to work on and we will fix.

Grace worked hard in the warm up and we made changes in the warm up room once we saw who she was against. What we worked got her through to round two. I don’t like singling out any one of them but we need to make a point that Grace was the FIRST English female Shotokan athlete to make it through to round two in a WKF International competition in all the years we have been competing, around 10 years, amazing performance.

Thank you to everyone who push these three within the squad.”

Well done to you all and keep up the excellent work!