Karate Championships set for Saturday

Politicians may be slugging it out in the war of words, but others are fighting for real.

Not all the action will be on the basketball court, fists and feet will be flying at the Holy Redeemer Parish Hall, as Belizean karate students, some as young as five years old, will be battling against the best from Mexico in the fifth annual Junior and Senior Karate Championships. According to Rick Bateman, President of the Martial Arts Federation of Belize, individuals from various clubs across the country will be competing.

Rick Bateman, President, M.A.F.B.

“There is no set Belize team right now. We have a Junior National Team that we put together for our competition in Cancun earlier this year. We’ve got a Belize National Team that is in preparation; they have not been selected as yet, but they are preparing. But all throughout the country people are training in their respective dojo’s preparing their katas and their sparring strategies and they will come together this weekend to test them out.

I think that we are prepared. I think that if anything, the competition that we went to in Cancun, where this past January, where there were competitors from the United States, from Australia, from Vietnam, from Haiti; there were six different countries that were represented and our team did very, very well. So I think we are going, that we carry whole lot of confidence now into any international competition that we go to.”

Bateman says just as there will be some high powered energy displayed during the CARICOM Basketball Tournament, the same can be expected from the Karate Championship.

Rick Bateman

“I think it is exciting for our competitors, because you put in so many hours, so many weeks, so many months, years for some, for some of these people training and this is an outlet for that. I mean they understand that there are benefits, that there are fringe benefits to training, the health, the self discipline, the confidence, but the competitions are very tangible and they are immediate.”

Besides the competition, there will be weapons and board breaking demonstrations, and a chance at door prizes for all those who attend. The fun and excitement gets underway from ten, Saturday morning.

Tickets for the tournament at five dollars adults, three dollars children, are available at the National Sports Council and Belize Martial Arts Federation, located upstairs at Riverside Hall.