I remember it like it was yesterday, playing ninja’s one day at school during recess.  (Just to set the record straight, I was my elementary school’s leading authority on martial arts.  I had seen more ninja movies, and had bought more martial arts magazines than anyone.  Thus making me the authority even though I had never trained)

My friend Philip, criticised one of my kicks that I had just done.

“That’s not a roundhouse kick.” he said.

“How do you know what a roundhouse kick is.  You don’t do karate.”  I replied with a whole bunch of attitude.

“Yes, I do.  I started last week.” Philip said.

I was shocked.  How could this have happened.  There was now a possibility for other kids with martial arts questions to go to someone else, because he was legit.  I couldn’t let this happen, I felt my playground ninja credability slipping through my hands.

“If I ask my Mom, can I go with you.” I asked with much more humility.

“Sure.”

There it was.  I began the following week with Sensei Cliff Broad at the Tillicum Karate Club in Victoria.  The funny thing is that my Mom had taken me dojo shopping about a year before.  Sensei Cliff’s dojo was the one that she had picked for me.  I wanted to go to a different dojo as they played more games there when I watched a class.  I had watched a class at Sensei Cliff’s dojo and he was strict.  My mom simply said that if I was going to do karate, I was going to train with Sensei Cliff as he would make me good, the other guy just made teddy bears with brown belts.  So nothing happend until I found out that my friend was going there.

My point is that I didn’t have enough courage to go to karate on my own when I started.  I had to go with a Buddy.  This is one of the main reason’s that we have buddy month.  Because if there wasn’t buddy month at Sensei Cliff’s dojo.  There probably wouldn’t be a Curran’s Karate.  Which means you would have either enrolled in another school in town or accordion lessons fused with interpretive dance…  Weird.

So please be a good friend like Philip was to me and bring a buddy.

The funny thing is that Philip quit karate shortly after, I didn’t.  That is all that a black belt is…  A white belt that never quit.

(As a reward for reading this I have included this terrible photo.  This photo has been locked in isolation for over 20 years and is now free for the public to view.  Let me make a few disclaimers:  The trophy says 90 on it as in 1990.  At this time New Kids On The Block were very “Rad” so my hair done like that actually took time, hairdryer with a difuser, and about 17 pumps of ice mist hairspray).  If I get enough likes on this when I post it to facebook I may even include photo’s of when I was a higher belt and Vanilla Ice was “cool”.

Who wouldn't want this guy teaching their kids.

Here is everything that you need to know for the month’s of April & May.

Here is a newsletter with all that you will need to know for the month of April.

Newsletter

Congratulations to everyone from our dojo that participated in the 2012 Karate Canada National Championships.  A huge thank you to all the families that came to support and watch.

We ended up with the following medals:

Arash Beytoei:  3rd Men’s Open, & 2nd Men’s Team

Brian Purves:  2nd Men’s Team

Samantha Rowland:  3rd Girls 16/17 -68kg

Here is a video with some highlights from the event.