English Karate Federation Regional Challenge

team

The EKF have for the first time included an inter regional championships in their annual calendar. The first of these events took place in Lincoln on January 12th, and both Barry Meanwell and Tony Dent were part of the competition. The format was a simple three way round robin, between the three regions England is allowed to have represented. Barry was obviously part of the Northern Squad, whereas Tony was there acting as an official. Each squad had competitors from the cadet, junior and senior age groups, with both male and female members. The competition was a straight forward team event, with two main differences. Firstly the teams all contained around 16 members each, and secondly it was fought on a points basis rather than bout wins.

The first match saw the Midlands Squad versus the Southern Squad. This match would end with a Midlands victory giving them 3 points and the first team victory of the afternoon. The next match on the tatami was our first opportunity to compete. This was against the previous match losers the South. Unfortunately this match up didn’t go our way and this gave the South 3 points on their tally. This meant that the Northern squad was now the only team without points on the score board.

The opportunity to redeem ourselves came in the third and final match, which was obviously a face-off with the midlands. A win here would be against the run of play, when you consider the fact that the Midlands beat the South in the first match, and we lost to the South in the next. However a team talk by Ian Swain and Paul Newby the Northern coaches seemed to motivate the squad sufficiently. By the end of the match the North had won, albeit by a small margin. This was enough to secure a matching 3 points for the North though, so it was a great result.
With all three regions securing 3 points each, the winning team would be the ones who had secured the best points difference. Following the counting of all scores during the three matches, the South had won the competition overall with a points difference of +13 points. The midlands were in 2nd place with a score of + 4 points, which meant that the Northern Squad were in 3rd place, with a point’s difference of -17 points.
For Barry it was a day of mixed fortunes. His first fight ending in a draw, he was hopeful of a more beneficial outcome in his next match. However as things turned out, his opponent was to be the two times Junior European Champion Ryan Jay. The match began with both competitors managing to hold the other off, until Ryan managed the only score of the match with a Jodan Mawashigeri.

The event itself was a total success, and the 2014 competition will be an event not to miss.


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