KSE 7 Gloucester

The Dhesi family were in fine form again on the 2nd March, when they travelled to Gloucester for the KSE7 event held at the G1 Arena. This was the second time we had, or more specifically they had, attended this event, and it proved to be a very fruitful day. Entering as many categories as they could because of the distance travelled, the young trio entered the 11 categories which were available to them. The resulting success covered 4 gold medals, 1 silver medal and a bronze to accompany them.

First up in the kata categories was Amrit, who managed to secure the first gold medal of the day by winning all of his 4 kata bouts 3-0. This was a great start and threw down the gauntlet to his brother and sister. In response Charan also took the gold, but during her matches managed to drop a flag along the way. Never the less she also took the 4 wins and doubled up on the gold medals to that point. Following this the young duo took to the mats again in the pairs kata event, and managed a repeat performance of 3-0 wins throughout the 3 bouts in the category. Triple gold at this point had everyone buzzing.

Before Teerth could take to the mats for his kata category, there was the small matter of the team kata event to contest. This was a much smaller category, only requiring two performances. The first match was a 3-0 win for our team of Teerth, Charan and Amrit, which set up a another opportunity for a gold medal performance. The final saw a team of quality as their opponents, and although our team were victorious with a 2-1 win, I do feel we had a turn of good fortune in the result. This as they say is the nature of the beast, but I think the opposing team will have been justifiably disappointed with the result. We have to accept the results as the results though, and this did indeed mean we had now won 4 from 4 gold medals.

The luck deserted us at that point however, because in the open kata event the two younger Dhesi’s were able to enter, and in Charan’s Kumite event, we suffered some bad decisions. This is all part of competition though as I said earlier, and they took it on the chin and moved on. The open event saw Charan win 3-0, and then lose 2-1, with Amrit exiting in exactly the same manner. Unfortunate but their performances were what I would have hoped for. Charan’s Kumite disappointment still saw her win a silver medal, and the loss wasn’t really the frustrating part. Her opponent was a young man with good skill and a deserving winner, the problem was the way the match panned out. A jodan kick which hit Charan’s mitt was scored meaning the score was 0-3, followed by a chudan kick which had only one flag was scored leaving the score at 0-5. The icing on the cake was a score for a punch which made contact with Charan’s head and should have been penalised. 0-6 meant that the match was over in less than 20 seconds leaving us rather frustrated. The result may have been the same at the end anyway but the annoying thing is we will never know. The lesson here though is for us all to take the rough with the smooth and concentrate on what comes next, not focus on what has been previously.

Amrit was next up for Kumite and in a large group managed 3 wins before he exited at the semi-final stage. This mean however that he had won a bronze medal to compliment the medals from earlier in the day. This was our final medal for this competition, but it wouldn’t be right to finish the report before mentioning Teerth once more. Unfortunately his kata performance saw him exit in the first round in a 1-2 flag decision, but his Kumite was a much improved performance from late. He also had an enormous challenge on his hands because there was two pools to his large category. He got stuck into the task though and managed a trio of wins before he went out to a worthy opponent. Three wins in another competition would have been enough for a medal, but in such a large group it left him just short. Still, a great improvement from recent performances and one which will hopefully pay dividends as we look ahead to the Chojinkai championships next weekend.

Thanks must go to dad Mak for investing such an amount of money in this weekend, and to Gaynor Dent for coaching our youngsters on the day.

Well done everyone.

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