BUCS Karate Championships 2015

The BUCS (British Universities & Colleges Sport, the merger of BUSA and UCS) karate championships are held as part of the annual BUCS Championships, in which students from all over the country compete in over twenty different sports. The competition uses WKF rules.

Photos

View photos of the competition.

Competition Report

The British Universities and Colleges Sport (BUCS) Karate Championships were held over the weekend of the 21st and 22th of February. We saw an extremely high standard of competition with the best fighters from universities around the country coming to compete. Despite this, the team from CUKC did well by bringing back 2 bronze medals!


CUKC Team:
Amy Oliver
Justina Ogunseitan
Karol Fiedorczuk
Jonathan Sinclair-Williams
Scott Ang

CUKC Medallists:
Amy Oliver – Women's Novice Under 63kg Kumite Bronze
Karol Fiedorczuk – Men's Intermediate Kata Bronze


Individual Kata
Amy Oliver
Justina Ogunseitan
Karol Fiedorczuk
Jonathan Sinclair-Williams
Scott Ang

There was a strong showing from the pool of competitors. Depending on the luck of the draw for the knock-out table, some of our fighters met with medallists early on and were knocked out. However, Karol consistently outdid his opponents, and made it to the bronze medal match. There, he was limited by competition rules to perform his second best kata, Tekki Shodan, because he had already performed Bassai Dai the previous round. Unfortunately, his opponent narrowly beat him to advance to the finals.

Individual Kumite
Amy Oliver
Justina Ogunseitan
Karol Fiedorczuk
Jonathan Sinclair-Williams
Scott Ang

The competition this year was particularly tough, especially for the Men's Under 75kg category, which had almost double the number of competitors from the previous year. Karol and Jonny both met with very strong competition early on and were knocked out.

Scott, who was in the Men's Under 65kg category, did well in his fights, winning 4 of them with an 8 point gap before proceeding to the bronze medal match. There, he faced the silver medallist, where he was outmatched by the more experienced fighter. He then needed to defend his bronze medal during the reppechage match. Unfortunately, the other fighter was much better, and he was unable to hold on to the medal.

On the women's side, Justina fought against one of the medallists early in the competition. She was disappointed to be knocked out, but then pleasantly surprised when she was called to fight repechage rounds because the opponent she lost to had proceeded to the finals. She did herself justice and won her next few rounds with spirited performances, but she lost in the final match against a stronger opponent.

Amy had a most interesting match progression. She was pit against fighters who closely matched her fighting ability. With the exception of one of the medallists who won Amy by a clear margin, all of her other fights ended in a draw! The referees had to determine a winner based on the performance of the fighters during the match. This proved to work tremendously in Amy's favour. Amy won all of the drawn matches by referee decision, earning her a bronze medal in the Women's Novice Under 63kg Kumite. It was Amy's determination and hunger to win that really showed through her fights, earning her the favour of the referees.

Men's Team Kumite
Karol Fiedorczuk
Jonathan Sinclair-Williams
Scott Ang


Female Team Kumite
Amy Oliver
Justina Ogunseitan

In both the team kumite events, CUKC was unfortunately knocked out in the first round, in large part due to the lack of numbers (5 fighters for a full men's team, and 3 fighters for a full women's team). Still, it was a good effort by both teams.

Congratulations to all who did well in this competition!