KUGB Central Regions Championships 2008

The KUGB Central Regions Championships is held annually during the competition-filled Lent Term. The competition is open to all KUGB affiliated clubs in the centre of the country and is held in Chesterfield.

Competition Report

On Saturday CUKC took a squad of 20 competitors to the KUGB Central Regions Tournament in Chesterfield. We are extremely proud of not only the size of the squad, but of the quality of our members that represented the club so well on the day. Besides our group of seasoned competitors who always live up to our very high expectations, we were very proud to have many CUKC members who were competing for the very first time. All in all, the day was a complete success and we brought home an enormous haul of medals and trophies. I hope you're all sitting down, as it is going to take a few minutes to go through our list.

In the women's kyu grade kata competition, Tegwen Ecclestone (a first time competitor) brought home an outstanding result by taking second place while Libby Boyd took the gold with a solid performance of Bassai Dai. In the men's kyu grade kata competition, Richard Morrisby won fourth place and Andy Routhe earned the silver with a very strong Heian Godan. The women's dan grade kata saw Charlie Gray get to the finals where to won the bronze with Jion. The men's dan grade kata final involved Paul Smith who took the bronze with a very strong Kanku Sho and Roman Sztyler to won the gold medal with (what is now becoming a routinely) crowd-silencing Unsu. The A kata team (Ian MacLeod, Paul Smith, Tom Johnson) took the gold medal in their event with a strong execution of Kanku Sho.

CUKC's success in kata was easily matched in the realm of kumite. In the men's 21+ kyu grade kumite, Chris Andrews earned the bronze medal. The women's senior dan grade kumite saw Madeleine Wood and Charlie Grey take joint third place. Matt Cowie earned the bronze medal in the men's senior dan grade kumite while Ian MacLeod topped the division by earning the gold with a very impressive win against a strong opponent in the final. CUKC fielded two ladies team kumite teams this year of which the B team (Charlie Gray, Melissa Ruseler, and Libby Boyd) won the bronze and the A team (Madeleine Wood, Katerina Pateraki, and Gemma Coughlin) took silver. The men's A team kumite (Paul Smith, Ian MacLeod, Matt Cowie) won gold for Cambridge for the third year in a row, and for the second year in a row they took down Kaizen 2-1 in a nail-biting final, rounding off the day on a real climax.

Despite not being able to enter any of the children's categories in the competition, overall CUKC came 2nd in both kata and kumite as a club, the latter being by an incredibly fine margin of 2 points, which is an impressive feat!

Besides the usual competition taking place on Saturday, the Central Regions hosted the Northern Regions Squad in a friendly team kumite match. Representing the central regions were our own Madeleine Wood, Paul Smith, and Ian MacLeod. Indeed, these three competitors represented our regions very well as Madeleine and Ian beat their opponents awazette ippon-nothing and Paul Smith drew his match waza ari-waza ari to an extremely tough opponent.

Lastly, we just want to congratulate all of the CUKC members who were competing for the very first time: Christian Noack, Thibault Flinois, Tegwen Ecclestone, Jess Marvin, and Daniel Diggens. You all did a great job!! Keep up the good work!

Overall

Kata: 2nd
Kumite: 2nd (missed 1st place by 2 points)