Viola and Eddy travel overseas to compete in ICO World Competition
Norwin students, freshman Gabriella Viola and junior Xander Eddy, dominated the International Combat Organization (ICO) World Competition in Wales on October 15-19, 2025 across the ocean in Wales. Viola and Eddy were both crowned “overall fighting grand champion” to help lead the USA to a second-place overall finish of close to 20 countries in the international competition. Viola brought home 9 golds, 3 silvers, and 2 bronze, while Eddy brought home 8 gold medals.
Competing at a world level was no easy feat. It had competitors from all around the world.
“No, [it]definitely was not easy competing at the world stage,” said Eddy. “It’s just a completely different feeling I mean it’s like being on top of the world but no matter who it is no country brings any slouches, so you’re always gonna have like a hard fight even if it’s just point fighting on me and everybody is there to hit you hard and stuff like that so it’s never gonna be easy.”
The competition was in Wales. Wales is a country that is a part of the United Kingdom and to the west of England. The native language is Welsh, and the capital is Cardiff.
“It was fun. We got to see a lot of cool stuff, including Paris, which was incredible,” said Eddy. “But just past that, looking at the competition and seeing all of the different skills around the world is amazing.“
Eddy and Viola both train at the Allegheny Shotokan Viola Karate in North Huntingdon.
“On Mondays we usually go through like forms and basics and conditioning a little bit,” said Viola, “On Tuesdays I just have lessons so I’m like teaching people and then on Wednesday is all fighting and drills and on Thursday it’s a lot of practice with just people that travel and compete. It’s hard conditioning and strength training. Then on Friday is also our competition team that travels like abroad, and it is like lots of conditioning and like push-ups sit-ups running”
“In WAKO [World Association of Kickboxing Organization], I ranked number two in the world, and in ICO I rank number one for 16-17 open weight and +69 kg point fighting,” said Eddy.
“I ranked number one in the world for the 13-15 age group in point fighting in ICO [International Combat Organisation],” said Viola. “I ranked 3rd overall at WAKO and 1st overall at WKC for point fighting also.”
“It was definitely a very hard tournament. All of the countries brought very good competitors,” said Viola.
Bilinsky competes at World Championship Karate in Niagara Falls
Another successful athlete is Gavin Bilinsky, who won second in Forms and third in sparring for the 16-17 year old age bracket in the WCK World Championship Tournament.
To earn these medals, Bilinsky trained both mentally and physically in equal measure.
“Lots and lots of training,” said Bilinsky. “With the amount of training that you put in to go to a tournament like that, especially since you have to qualify to be there. You have to understand that you belong there no matter how you feel, no matter what you think, you have to realize you have to make yourself think that you’re there for a reason. You put all this effort, you just need to put it out there now.”
The tournament experience wasn’t all fighting and competition, as karate students from all over the world came together to celebrate the occasion and make friends with their fellow competitors.
”I enjoyed the amount of support that I gave and that I got not only from team USA but also other countries,” said Bilinsky. “it’s it’s like a big community there and it’s it’s really cool to just communicate with with all the different other countries and even at the end of this, we can trade stuff like we have team Gi’s and then we can also trade. With me I traded with team Mexico. I know some other people traded like team, England, or team Puerto Rico, which is really cool.”
After this, Bilinsky is going on a 4-month hiatus to rest and recoup, and to begin training for the next tournament he plans to go to, which is World Association of Kickboxing Organization.
