BUCS Karate Championships 2009

The BUCS (British Universities & Colleges Sport, the merger of BUSA and UCS) karate championships are held as part of the annual BUCS Championships, in which students from all over the country compete in over twenty different sports. The competition uses WKF rules. This year the BUCS Championships were held in Sheffield.

Photos

View photos of the competition.

Competition Report

Last weekend a team of ten members of CUKC travelled to the BUCS championships in Sheffield and I'm delighted to say returned with a tremendous collection of medals.

Day one started with the kata events and in the men's novice category Kai Chai eased through a huge number of elimination rounds, never giving the judges a hard time, and into the final where he secured the gold medal. In the same category Jonty Fairless saw off hoards of other competitors to take a bronze medal. First time competitor and star of the weekend, Sarah Samad, took bronze in the women's novice kata event, while Madeleine Wood only narrowly missed out on bronze after getting to the final of the reparcharge in what was a very strong women's black belt category.

The women's kumite team of Madeleine, Steph and Mingwei were also unlucky not to get a medal after making it through the first three rounds without dropping a fight. Unfortunately they went out in the semi final to a very tough and experienced Manchester team.

On day two Sarah kicked things off by obliterating her opponents in the early rounds of the women's novice lightweight kumite with a startlingly fast flurry of perfectly controlled jodan punches, eventually taking bronze and her second medal of the weekend. Madeleine lost out in the first round to the eventual winner of her kumite category, but she rallied right through the reparcharge showing her resilience and versatility by scoring with all sorts of techniques, chudan and jodan punches as well as chudan and jodan kicks, and she won the bronze medal. Steph, in only her second competition since returning from injury, fought like a true champion and made it through to the final of her category where she took silver. In an earlier round one of the the judges was so emphatic about scoring one of Steph's punches that his flag flew right out of his hand.

The weekend was textbook Cambridge: top class karate, and exemplary spirit and sportsmanship. Special congratulations to our four first time competitors, Sarah, Antony, Jenny and Mingwei, as well as all the medalists and the whole team for cheering each other on with much vigour and gusto throughout the weekend!