KUGB Student National Championships 2008

The KUGB National Student Championships (often just "the Student Nationals") is the first major competition of the academic year and falls in the middle of Michaelmas Term. The competition is open to all KUGB members in full-time education and is held in Chesterfield.

Photos

View photos of the competition.

Competition Report

Yesterday the squad travelled to Chesterfield to represent CUKC at the National Student Championships. Among the fourteen people competing for the club were seven who were competing for CUKC for the first time and two who were competing in kumite for the first time. There were many fantastic performances and we brought home a huge haul of medals — in fact the biggest number on record, 10 individual medals and 3 team medals.

The day kicked off with kata and after confident, assured performances in the eliminations both Digz and Tegwen made it through to the finals of their categories, taking bronze and silver respectively. In the black belt categories, solid performances in the eliminations saw Gosia, Paul and Roman through to the finals. Gosia won a well-deserved silver, Paul won bronze, and Roman once again dazzled the crowds and the judges alike with his Unsu, comfortably securing the gold medal.

On to kumite and here the women really shone: all three of our female fighters (Maddy, Gosia and Tegwen) made it through to the finals of individual and team kumite without dropping a single fight. En route to the team final the girls totally dominated their opponents; classy, sharp performances from new fighter Tegwen paved the way for her to score ippon against her opponent in the semis, securing the team's win by a huge margin. In the individual finals Tegwen won a fantastic gold in the women's kyu grade kumite with a devastating succession of gyaku-zukis against her opponents. Maddy won a hard-earned bronze, narrowly losing out to the eventual winner, while Gosia rounded off the ladies' excellent performances by taking the silver medal. In team kumite the women took silver in a nail-biting final that went right down to the line.

In the men's kumite new fighter Kai made it through two rounds and into the quarter-finals of the men's kyu grade kumite, with a number of fantastic jodan punches. Great performances from Thibault saw him storm right through to the final, where he won the silver medal. In the men's dan grade kumite Paul battled through to the finals and took a bronze medal. The men's A (Paul, Nim and Thibault) and B (Chris, Mike and Jonty) teams both won bronze medals, both losing narrowly in their semi-final fights.

All in all an excellent result from the whole team, who should all feel very proud.