KUGB Student National Championships 2006

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 CUKC squad were representing Cambridge at the KUGB National Students Championships in Chesterfield. For a lot of the team it was their first competition but this didn't stop us putting in a load of great performances and bringing back a huge haul of medals.

The day started off with kata and some great displays from Libby and Gareth took them to the finals. Libby went on to take silver in the womens kyu grade kata and Gareth 4th place in the men's, both of them beating a good number of higher grades along the way.

Ian, Tom Auld and Paul had a go at team kata with a hastily prepared kata sorted out 15 mins before the competition and it probably showed but we took bronze in the men's team kata.

Then it was time for Cambridge to carry on the success in the kumite. Steph stormed through the rounds in the women's 7th-4th kyu kumite and fought brilliantly to deservedly take the gold medal. Gareth fought well for another medal, coming 3rd in the male 7th-4th kyu kumite and Thomas H was very unlucky to go out to the eventual winner in a very close quarter final which went right to the end of extra time. In the male black belt kumite great performances from Tom Auld and Kai saw them reach the quarter finals whilst Ian battled on to take the silver medal.

The day finished off with the team kumite. Madeleine and Steph made up the women's team, all the other teams had three people but such trivialities weren't going to stop them and they fought fantastically to take the bronze. The men's A team of Ian, Paul and Kai put in a great performance to win all three fights against Liverpool and did well to squeeze past a tough York team to take them to the final against old rivals LSE. In a cloase match LSE won 2-1 and Cambridge took the silver medal.

There were too many medals for me to mention all the fanstastic individual performance throughout the day but I've got to mention Kai's perfect jodan-ura-mawashigeri in the first round of the kumite which left all the crowd, and his opponent oped mouthed and wondering how such a big guy could move his legs so fast.

So a terrific performance from all the team who should all feel very pleased with themselves and thanks to Sensei Richard especially and all instructors for their help.