GRIFFITH PCYC will host its biggest junior karate tournament in more than seven years this weekend when the Power Karate Titles attract the best young martial artists from across the eastern states to the city.
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Local officials have ended the long hiatus by providing a chance for junior fighters to hone their skills just before the International Federation of Karate Kyokushin (IFKK) state titles.
Sensei John Rule said more than 70 juniors and a handful of senior fighters will take to the mat in a bid to further improve their already considerable skills.
“Over the past seven or eight years we haven’t had a major tournament here under our affiliation with the union,” Rule said.
“But because they are not going to have a junior section at the nationals this year, officials are looking at this tournament just to see how we go with it and we might make it our national championship for the juniors in the future.
“We’ve got our state titles coming up in about three to four weeks, so we wanted to squeeze this tournament in for the juniors so it can be a lead up to the big state titles.”
While Rule is predicting the full-contact action to be fierce, he is confident several of his students are excellent chances to be standing at the top of the podium at the end of the day.
“I have high expectations of Janvi Beri who is the current state champion for 10 to 12 years and Issac Ryan in the 10 to 12 boys, he was second last year in the state, so they should be very good chances,” he said.
“I’m really expecting big things from them, but Jacob Williams, who has been training with me for about three years, he’s in the same draw as Issac but at the opposite end.
“So that is going to be very interesting fight if they get to the final, because even though Issac is a bit bigger, they spar all the time together in training so it would be interesting to see if Jacob can figure Issac out.
“And we have got a Indian girl, we call her Deep, and she only started training half-way through last year and she is showing a lot of potential and will be hard to stop in that division on the weekend.
“She’s very serious the way she trains and I think she will be around here for a while which is good because she’s a very god student.”
As part of the adult entertainment, fourth-dan black belt and three-time Australian champion and former New Zealand middleweight champion Graeme Rose will put on a spectacular breaking demonstration.
Rule himself will take to the mat in a bid to cross off the final task for his third-dan black belt.
“I’ve got a fair bit of a pressure on me as well on the day, because I’ll be doing my katas for my third-dan belt,” Rule said.
“It’s been about 17 years since my last grading, but I have done a lot of the grading work at some of the camps I have been away to, so I have had 60 fights in the last few camps.”
Action will get under way at the Griffith PCYC on Saturday from 9am, with the demonstrations beginning at 12.30pm.
