We have moved to Vine Grove Kentucky, 416 C Highland Ave..

————————————————

————————————————

Entering last weekend’s Amateur Athletic Union National Karate Championships in Cincinnati, 12-year-old Elizabeth Irish hadn’t lost in her three meets this year.

In fact, prior to the competition, the Fort Knox Independent Karate Federation student, who had been virtually unstoppable in the novice kata category was heralded by instructor John Harris as one of the school’s best shots at contending for its first national title.

However, in a meet of such notoriety and national prominence, Irish proved no match against the pressure of battling some of the country’s top competitors.

"She was so overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude (of the meet) that she could hardly speak," said Harris. "Her mother said, ‘She’s in trouble.’ It was such a big event."

Featuring more than 2,000 of the nation’s toughest participants, Irish’s uncharacteristic performance was just one of several surprises to Harris during the AAU meet.

"Some of the ones we expected to do good didn’t," he said, "and some of the ones we didn’t expect to do good did."

Collectively, the 29 Fort Knox members who competed captured five medals. The medalists were Joe Moore; age 8, silver, sparring; Trent Emory, 10, silver, sparring; Jasmine Falcon, 14, bronze, spar ring; Eddie Rader, 10, bronze, kata; and Karen Gauvey, 11, bronze, sparring.

Although Falcon and Rader were expected to be legitimate national championship contenders in their respective divisions, Harris unable to pinpoint the cause of their underachieving performances.

"I expected Jasmine to win her kata, but she ended up near the bottom," Harris said. "I didn’t get to see a video of her because I was doing a lot of coaching around the ring, so I wasn’t able to give her a lot of attention.

"I’ll have to wait to see a video of most of them (before determining what went wrong). I need to find out what happened."

Until last weekend’s competition, Emory, who took bronze in sparring during the ‘92 meet, was the team’s only medal winner. However, his and Moore’s silvers now rank as Knox’s most prestigious awards.

"(The meet) really went great," Harris said. "Knox is still a young school, so they haven’t got much experience yet. Now that these guys have some experience, it’ll spill over into (next year).

"We got our foot in the door, and we’re going to do more. We went from one medal last year to four this year—that’s a big difference. And this was our first full year of competing."

Although Knox had a chance to compete against some of the top karate programs in the country, Harris said it’s difficult to compare the somewhat inexperienced IKF with other veteran schools.

"It’s hard to put the Fort Knox school (in competition) by itself," he said. "When we go to competition, we go together (with the Elizabethtown Independent Karate Federation). If you look at schools like Erlanger, they won 30 medals, and we (Fort Knox and Elizabethtown) won 14. They’ve been doing this a lot longer.

"There was a phenomenal jump from our first and second teams that went (to the national competition). If this is any indication, we’ll be even better next year."

With the national exposure, Harris hopes to use the experience to better train the Knox squad for next year’s round of competitions, which gets underway in March.

"We have to try to work more and more," he said. "All of the medalists know this (the com petition) is the easy part. The hard part is doing it again next year."

[ Home ] [ Up ]

Send mail to senseijohn@windstream.com with questions or comments about this web site.
Copyright © 2007 Harris Martial Arts, LLC.
Last modified: 03/04/10