43rd JKF Wadokai Nationals; Shiramizu stats!

Here are the results from the Wadokai Nat'ls. I know for sure former interns Mark and Paul will like to spot the names of those they know, which should be easy since many of the kids are in the Shiramizu English program.

I picked out the Shiramizu results from the main list on the Wadokai's Japanese homepage.
http://karatedo.co.jp/wado/

Kumite:
Ele. grade 1 boys: Masatoshi Arakawa (gold)
Ele. grade 4 boys: Deki Noda (best 8), Yusuke Arakawa (best 16)
Ele. grade 6 boys: Rikito Nakano (gold)
Men's over 18: Atsunori Mori (best 8)

Kata
Ele. grade 1-2 boys: Inzen Tomizawa (bronze), Masatoshi Arakawa (best 8)
Ele. grade 3-4 boys: Yusuke Arakawa (best 8), Jyu Nishida & Hiroki Yoshida (best 16)
Ele. grade 5 boys & girls: Yutero Sagara (best 16)
Ele. grade 6 boys & girls: Kana Yoshiwara (gold), Takushin Yoshiwara (silver), Yuto Fujinaka (best 16)
Jr high boys: Kanya Sakura (gold)
High school girls: Yuki Nagahori (silver), Chihiro Ogawa (bronze), Aya Hagiwara (best 16)
Women's over 40: Noriko Yoshiwara (gold)

Personally, I found the quality of the kata very strong, especially from the high school level students, easily rivaling the adults. The kumite was all over the map, from so-so to brilliant.

There were men's and women's over 40 kumite and kata divisions, plus men's over 50 kata and kumite divisions. It was nice to see many fine performances from people in these divisions, many whom could have easily given the regular adult's divisions a run for their money.

Arakawa Sensei said from this year he would begin participating in the over 40 divisions, but with so many students to manage (53 karate athletes!), he must have found it just too hard to take time out to compete. He did say he would enter the tournaments just for masters (over 40) from this year too!


Just for some background, this is a picture of Arakawa Sensei winning the men's kata division at the 38th Wadokai Nationals (2002).

Richard