July 11 through July 14 was the 2013 USANKF Karate Nationals in Greenville, South Carolina. This was my first experience at a national tournament and it was an interesting time. Watching these Karate competitors was an experience like none I have seen before. The amount of energy and the level of the competition was enormous.
I captured some excellent videos, not as many as I had wished because of camera and timing issues, but take a look below:
This is the full playlist of 19 videos totaling 38 minutes.
If you want to jump to specific videos, once you start playing the video, you can click near the bottom right corner on the button marked “watch on youtube” to choose what you want to watch.
Needless to say, I am very proud of my son Donald, who took bronze in the Iaido competition. I am also proud to be part of a club with who all brought their “A game” to a very tough competition.
My son also entered the Shotokan specific and open Kata divisions and although he didn’t win, he got a great deal of experience at his first national competition. I also entered the Senior 35+ Kata division and won my first round, five flags to zero and lost my second with two flags out of five against a very seasoned Shito Ryu competitor who took the bronze medal.
It was a great time and the people both on and off the tatami were first class.
I would also like to give a special thanks to Kathy Bailey, Dominic Noia, William Gatch, Brian Plocharczyk, Sensei Cieplik, Deneise and Donald Wojtczak for preparing me for nationals! I’m Sorry that I didn’t bring home a medal for all of you but I feel good about what I did there. Doing Gojushiho Sho for the first time at a tournament felt awesome and being out on the tatami with such great competition was an experience I will not forget.