Seven Norwin High School students traveled to Orlando to compete in a prestigious, international karate competition called WKC Worlds (World Karate Commission). At this tournament, competitors came together from all around the world to test their skills and display months of preparation to each other. Competitors could display their skills in a variety of divisions from speed fighting (sparring), to kata and weapons (forms).
The seven students from Allegheny Shotokan with Sensei Bill Viola that competed for Team USA at WKC were: Alexander Eddy, Austin Hladek, Lucy Lokay, Samantha Pietrzyk, Alexa Daly, Noelle Kravetz and Kate Regina. Team USA participants made many preparations for WKC Worlds. Countless hours of training and preparation was put into this. The Team began training from around June to October.
“Team USA made many preparations for this tournament,” said Norwin sophomore Kate Regina, a member of Team USA who traveled to Orlando. “We had set training every Friday from 5 to 6. Almost every practice was focused around endurance while some focused on other skill sets we needed to better in order to perform our best at worlds. Our practice mostly consists of cardio. Majority of these workouts would not only train our endurance, but also train our strength. We would run while holding dumbbell weights over our heads and hold 6 inches while we would punch with our weights. After about 40 minutes of our cardio and strengthening exercises, we would then begin sparring practice. Overall, we trained hard and everyone was very dedicated into improving themselves in time for Worlds.”
While most of team USA’s training focused on endurance training and strength training for sparring, there was a variety of different divisions that one could compete in.
“Divisions can differ from gender, age, and weight, and then there’s different types of divisions, like forms, point sparring, continuous sparring, and weapons,” said Regina. “Forms and weapons are on the same page, they are both kind of a routine with set motions, and strikes and blocks but weapons include all of that but with a weapon.”
Fortunately, there were many medalists from Team USA, most of which were students from Norwin High School. Freshmen Alexander Eddy was 1st in continuous sparring and 2nd in team sparring. Senior Austin Hladek was 1st in traditional kata and 3rd in kata. Senior Lucy Lokay was 1st in point sparring. Sophomore Samantha Pietrzyk was 2nd in continuous sparring and 3rd in point sparring.
At WKC Worlds one of the most impressive things is the amount of people there, and the diversity. Many people in their lifetime don’t get to meet or even witness people from different countries. People from Team USA got to meet and compete against people from Mexico, Venezuela, Europe, Puerto Rico, and many other places around the world.
“There were thousands of people there,” said Regina. “They fully filled a large banquet hall and even then, it was still very difficult to walk to different rings and places. While I was there, I was fortunate to meet a girl from Mexico. We met in the hotel pool and talked for hours, which I don’t know how we did because I don’t know Spanish, and she knew very little English. But the following day I watched her compete and win her whole sparring division. After that, I congratulated her and we went our separate ways. She was a very nice girl, but I doubt we’ll ever meet again. That’s the sad thing about competing internationally.”
For next year, the World Karate Commission announced that WKC Worlds will be held in Portugal in November Team USA will continue to prepare and train for next year’s WKC Worlds, and other future tournaments they will fight in.
