We find ourselves in strange times and despite some disruption at the start club life continues. We had a short period at the beginning of the Coronavirus outbreak where there was no training and no way to train together but like many other clubs we soon got up and running with virtual training. Our Karate at Home training schedule currently runs two nights per week and we use Zoom to enable us to all train at the same time and get some kind of feeling like training together at the club.
Aided largely by the fact so many of our students are so technically adept we’ve had very few issues, apart from the poor broadband access at times, which has meant that we’ve been able to continue developing our Karate. A normal part of our calendar year involves students training towards a Grading and despite this being unfamiliar to all the club decided to go ahead and setup a remote grading.
On the 4th of July we held our first virtual grading as a club. Although it may have felt a little odd at first everyone, in particular the kids, really did themselves proud. They put in extra training in the lead up to the grading, a lot of hard work (as they normally would) to be ready and on the day, when they could have been more nervous than normal with the change of format they all excelled and delivered brilliant performances on the day.
To mark this historic first we’ve got some photos of some of the student to record how proud the club is of them doing so well – in the lead up to – and on the day of the grading. Students who graded and accomplished new grades were :-
| Ava De Rosa | 8th Kyu |
| Lilly Allan | 8th Kyu |
| Xavier John Rowan | 7th Kyu |
| Abbie Fairbairn | 6th Kyu |
| Mya Rose Adams | 6th Kyu |
| Aaron Collins | 5th Kyu |
| Lisa Marie Adams | 5th Kyu |
| Gavin McVie | 5th Kyu |
| Andrew Smith | 4th Kyu |
| Holly Posselwhite | 3rd Kyu |
| Aayan Sarfraz | 1st Kyu |
Well done to everyone, you should be incredibly proud of your hard work
