THERE were more than 1,000 competitors from Australia and aboard who attended the International Sport Karate Association World Cup in late October, but the contingent from Precision Martial Arts Bathurst more than held their own.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
The 21-member Bathurst team picked up six wins, 10 runner-up finishes and 12 third placings between them to be ranked seventh out of the 90 teams which attended the three-day event at Liverpool.
The success came across a wide range disciplines from kata and weapons to self defence, sumo, point sparring, sword combat and ju jitsu in an effort which delighted sensi Taylor Hickey.
“I’m really happy, almost everyone on the team placed in something and you can’t really ask for much more than that,” she said.
“We trained pretty hard, so I thought a lot of our guys would come out with something, but we did better than I expected.
“I was hoping for us just to finish top 20, so to then come away with seventh was just awesome.
“We’ve had a bit of a rebuilding year in terms of our tournament team, we’ve had a few new members this year. So I wasn’t necessarily expecting heaps of things because I had a couple who were fairly green.”
It was three of the younger Precision Martial Arts Bathurst members who picked up the World Cup victories in Keelan Ruston-Walkom, Amber Gay and Beau Blattman.
Ruston-Walkom placed first in kata, sword combat and point as well as picking up a fourth in synchronised kata. Gay earned a pair of wins in kata and ju jitsu to go with a third in synchronised kata, while Blattman took out the self defence title and ranked fourth in synchronised kata.
“Keelan, he did exceedingly well, he’s only six. He puts in a lot of hours, so he was really happy. There was one event, the kata, we put a whole lot of work into that for months, so really happy with that one,” Hickey said.
“Amber is a bit older, she’s 11 and she’s been training since she was like five. So just hours and hours of training, she’s absolutely amazing.
“That was our first ever ju jitsu win for our club, our first ever first place, so that was very exciting.
“Beau, again, a lot of hours went into his win, Beau’s seven.
“We’ve got the Australian National titles coming up, they’ll be in Sydney on the 26th of November. So again we will be hoping for some good results, everyone’s really motivated after coming home with some wins, so they’re prepared to do some more work.”
