As far as the Academy was concerned 2004 was a good year. Students got back into training quickly in January, with Colin Avis winning the first Student of the Month award in 2004 for his good from despite the short Christmas layoff. February saw the Academy enter its first tournament of 2004; the first of the ‘Kick It’ events, with students bringing home no less than 8 gold’s, 5 silvers & 5 Bronzes, with student Justin Goh collecting two more gold’s, one for ‘Best Competitor’ & the other for ‘Best Technique’ of the tournament. The Academy was also honoured to receive a visit from Fereidun Dariagard, 6th dan, from Denmark IAOMAS, who graciously taught a few techniques from his system as well as observing the class. Priya Shah became Februarys ‘Student of the Month’ as even then as a Yellow belt, she was technically sound, her patterns were (and still are) crisp & sparring was spot on or even above her level back then. March saw the first grading of 2004 which was a joint grading with The London Panthers Taekwon-do School. Unfortunately it saw a few failures, but thankfully no one from the Academy. At this grading Bako Kadir, Sharad Nakarja, Krishan Tank & Qasim Hussain all promoted from junior to senior coloured belt ranks, with O+ marks being gained by Justin Goh & Bako Kadir! Marches ‘Student of the Montt’ was won by Aaron Bennett, who unfortunately is not training at the moment In April Saphaa Simab won the ‘Student of the Month’ award, which is a hard achievement for juniors. Saphaa won it due to her efforts in training and no matter the hard work, remained always smiling and happy. May saw the London Youth Games squad selections take place, Sonal Lakhman, Dev Patel, Sharad Nakarja, Fayaz Latifi, Krishan Tank, Bernard Rebello & Paaras Tank all made the squad under the watchful eye of Sensei Henry Francis, and Mr Anslow gained the position of Assistant Coach for the Harrow Squad for the London 2004 Youth Games. It should be noted that a last minute team was fielded, and the students selected had to compete in an unknown format against other students who have trained that way since they started training, so gave an exceptional account. 90% of the team was made up from students of Rayners Lane. May was actually a ‘lull’ month for the Academy, as you may have saw in the June news letter; that talked of many disappointments, which culminated in the Academies own ‘Taekwon-do Explosion’ event being cancelled! No students received the ‘Student of the Month’ award in May! June saw the 2nd Grading of 2004 take place which saw Fayaz Latifi make senior coloured belt ranks and Dev Patel reach 1st Kup, being only the second student ever from the Academy to achieve that in what was a very tough grading. There were a couple of failures at that grading unfortunately, but on the plus side, Marla Riddell, Zuhayr Chagpar & Ladi Oshunniyi all gained O+ level passes for their respective grades. June was the month of the ‘1st South East Opens` run by Mr Chris Snow from St Albans. Thankfully notes were taken from the news letter and we had quite a few entries. This tournament was an Open weight event, but the contact was kept firmly in control. There were only gold & silver placings at this event and the divisions were big & tough. Justin Goh won the gold in the Green to Red belt patterns after battling some fine competitors including Parvez, Colin, Sushil & Dev (who gained the silver) amongst others. This division alone over 32 entries! Li Sun won a Gold in the sparring, in his first ever competition and amused everyone with his ‘Carry On’ antics, Dev won Gold in his 13 to 15 year old sparring divisions, facing our own Paaras Tank in the final. Justin picked up his 2nd gold, despite getting physically knocked out on route; he recovered & finished the round against a very good (and very big) opponent. Mr Anslow fought in the Black Belt divisions, taking on both Taekwon-do & Kick Boxing black belts of varying weights to claim the gold; he also won Silver in the Black belt Patterns! Hershal Shah did well to get the Silver as well in his division. The day culminated in an Open Grade & Open Weight event called ‘King of the Ring` which saw some exciting stuff. Upset of the day must have been for Parvez Sultan who was beaten by Colin Avis, only to be beaten by Mr Anslow, who in his first round faced the giant that had previously knocked Justin out earlier on. The ‘King of the Ring’ was won by our own instructor, hopefully leaving students secure in the abilities of their instructor who keeps claiming total retirement from competition looms! As a final boost, the winning of this event secured Rayners Lane Taekwon-do Academy with the Best Overall School Award! Sushil Punj also gained a nice shiner that day and Krishan Tank managed to cut his foot open before the event even began! Sharad Nakarja was Junes ‘Student of the Month` after great leaps & bounds were seen in his training. June also saw the first IAOMAS badges come into the club; these badges are now worn around the world by many students & instructor who are part of the IAOMAS family. July was a rather quiet month, but saw Justin Goh (2003 Student of the Year) win ‘Student of the Month’ for all his behind the scenes work that he does & continues to do! August saw us having to switch locations on a regular basis due to summer activities in the hall, which I’m pleased to say were fairly well attend by both juniors & seniors, many thanks must go to Kate for arranging these venues for us. In August Mr Anslow was thrilled and honoured to receive a visit from his long time friend, fellow martial arts instructor & IAOMAS pioneer Dave Melton (and his lovely wife Annette). Dave graciously took the class through a warm up, he showed some great hapkido techniques & some danjun breathing exercises then to his credit, kitted up & drilled with the junior grades & sparred with all the seniors & Mr Anslow, which was about 20 rounds in all. Following the class (and to my surprise) Mr Melton presented Mr Anslow with an award that had been brought all the way from the US. It was from the ‘Molum Combat Arts Honour Society’ of which Sensei Tim White, 7th Dan (and IAOMAS member) is a founder member and called a ‘Yap Suk Dai Ji Award’ and read: Following the class, all students had the chance to socialise with Mr Melton at the local Kebab house which went well into the early hours. As Mr Anslow was sad to see him go, he arranged to meet up again before he went home, which he did with Justin, who took them all on a whirlwind tour of London.. Some of the girls from the Academy (Lyndsey, Sonal & Kate) made their (in)famous ‘Rayners Lane Angelz’ video (available from all good web sites) and Krishan Singhal won the August ‘Student of the Month’ award after impressing everyone with his courage and abilities in sparring. September was a fairly busy month. Early on we saw the 3rd grading of 2003 take place which saw the Academies 3rd (ever) graded red belt, Justin Goh (gained with an O+ level pass). It was a small, but very in-depth grading this time around. September also saw the 2nd IAOMAS England Seminar, which we were fortunate enough to hold at the Academy for the second year running. Again we had very high quality instructors in Hapkido, Unarmed Combat, Wing Chun, Kempo Jiu Jitsu, Kali & Panakutan, Reikijitsu, Brazlian Jiu Jitsu, Self Protection and of course Taekwon-do . If you missed it, you certainly missed out! Fayaz Latifi won the August ‘Student of the Month’ award for his very consistent training, which has given him such great techniques! October was an even busier month! This month started off with many students attending the 3rd yearly ‘Kick it’ event. In this tournament we saw in the Patterns Divisions, Sonal Lakhman and Justin Goh win Gold’s, with Dev Patel and Kate Barry gaining Silvers, and in the Individual Sparring Divisions Kate Barry, Dev Patel, Sonal Lakhman, David Lane and Mr Gutam all won Gold’s. Priya Shah, Gill Nightingale, Vijay Sood (who picked up a lovely broken nose) and Colin Avis all picked up silvers, with Justin Goh taking a Bronze. The ‘Battle Royale’ tag team, consisting of Justin, Colin & Kate also won the adult team sparring event against some tough opponents. Rayners Lane Taekwon-do Academy again won the ‘Best Overall School’ award and even though we only competed in 2 out of the 3 ‘Kick it’ events, we still placed 3rd overall! Just two weeks later and many students were off to the World Championships in Dublin, Ireland & whether you won or not, it was a great weekend away. Of those that went Parvez Sultan, Dev Patel, Justin Goh, Lyndsey Reynolds, Colin Avis, Sonal Lakhman, Kate Barry, Hershal Shah, Priya Shah, Vijay Sood, Gill Nightingale and Mr Anslow all brought home medals, many more than one, with both Lyndsey and Sonal gaining Double World Champion status. Abhijay Sood, Sushil Punj & Sharad Nakarja were very unlucky not to come home with something! Highlights of the weekend were Parvez fulfilling his 4 year long dream of becoming a World Champion and doing it in style, Lyndsey and Sonal battling it out round after round in the Patterns divisions, Hershal defeating Sharad on his way to a medal, Justins lovely jump reverse break over Colins head, Sonals opponent bursting into tears every time Sonal hit her (which was often), little Abhijay battling hard, Dev and Sushils humungous patterns division (60+ we reckon), Vijays pride at winning, Priya taking on & beating a black belt plus her obvious joy at winning the first medal of the event for the Academy, Devs tear up with a black belt, Colins opponent in the Continuous finals running off to be sick half way through the bout (right next to Justin), the chief organiser personally coming to greet Mr Anslow in his division, the great photo of Sushils kick in his pattern, the big rough dudes in Sharads & Hershals sparring division, Kates triumphant comeback, Gill winning a gold with only a few months training, Mr Anslow 3 board break (he should have done four), the 76 year old competitor and from Mr Anslow: meeting Mike Beard, Keith Finch, Jay King and other IAOMAS members, plus Luke from the IAOMAS forum, and of course the party in room 48!!!, the ‘Spam’ game, Vijays new undies, the cake fight and the mysterious hidden banana in the bag! Octobers ‘Student of the Month’ was won by Sushil Punj, who we know (although he never showed or said it) was disappointed not to have gained a medal at the World Champs, showing true indomitable spirit all the way. November saw us host the Pressure Point supremo Sensei Rick Clarke, 8th dan, who despite a poor turnout from students took those that did attend through an exhilarating 3 hours of pain. Hopefully more will attend the next one! November also saw many students enter the BUTF British Championships, which was organised by Justin Goh. For those who don’t know, the BUTF is Mr Anslows previous association, so all students that attended were competing in front of his friends & peers & gave very credible performances which even saw Mr Choy, 8th Dan & head of the BUTF applauding. On the day, we saw only Dennis & David win bronzes in patterns due to the nature of them being changed. However, Rayners Lane Taekwon-do Academy shone in the sparring. The White & Yellow belt heavy weights saw Dennis & Fintan facing off in the finals, this was repeated in the red and blue belt divisions with Justin and Parvez facing off in the finals as well. Hershal Shah fought and beat some good opponents winning gold, as did Paraas Tank in his division. Our only destruction medal of the day came from David Lane in the men’s hand destruction, whilst Krishan Tank, Colin Avis, Lyndsey Reynolds and Sonal Lakhman all took bronzes and had some tough fights (especially Sonal who got whacked in the face a few times) and Lloyd who fought a very good kicker… so good even his mum was scared! At the tournament we also met up with IAOMAS Poland instructor Piotr Bernat, which was nice. The next day Justin took his brother to Imperial Taekwon-dos tournament & managed to wangle his way to compete. He cleaned up winning silver in patterns, and gold’s in sparring, hand destruction and foot destruction (his brother also did well). December saw the last grading of 2004, with over 30+ students grading it was possibly the biggest grading to ever take place at the Academy. Despite a couple of disappointments, it saw David, Hershal & Priya move up to the senior ranks, and both David & Colin gaining O+ level passes. The night before, Dev, Justin, Colin, Kate & Mr Anslow performed a well received demo in front of a couple of local Scout groups. Kate Barry won the December ‘Student of the Month’ award for a triumphant comeback after a long lay off due to medical reasons, her hard work & effort in training and consistent support of the Academy, its students & its endeavours. December will also see the annual Christmas dinner and the cool end of year raffles (see the 2004 Christmas Magazine). For the record, in 2004 we entered 5 tournaments (6 if you include Justins extra one in November), averaging around 14 student entries each time, from which we brought back 43 Gold medals, 27 Silvers and 22 Bronzes (not bad considering one tournament had no bronze medal positions at all). From these tournaments we also gained 7 World Champions, two of which are double World Champions and 5 British Champions. In the martial arts press, the January issue of Taekwon-do & Korean Martial Arts Magazine featured last years IAOMAS seminar & plenty of photos. In the February issue was the article ‘Patterns: Telling it like it is - The Sine Wave’ which had photos of Mr Gautam, Vijay, Justin & Marlon. In the March issue was a report of Colin Wee`s visit called ‘Opposite Sides Of The World Meet’. In Fighters Magazine in April was a report of the ‘Kick It’ tournament written by Dev Patel. In Mays Taekwon-do & Korean Martial Arts Magazine Charlotte Fox appeared in the ‘Kids In Taekwon-do’ section. Whilst in the September issue, many students photographs appeared with the report by Mr Snow of the ‘Dawn of the 1st South East Opens’. In Novembers issue of the same magazine, an interview I did with Grandmaster Kong Young Il appeared, along side an old interview of myself (a year & a half + old actually). In November we also got some local press coverage in the Harrow Observer & Harrow Times, featuring those that competed at the World Championships. There was a great picture of Sushil & Lyndsey made the back page! And December’s issue of Taekwon-do & Korean Martial Arts Magazine featured a massive 8 page spread, with loads of photographs, of the 2nd England IAOMAS seminar. Many of the magazine articles can be downloaded via the ‘Zips’ section (via the In The MA Press section) of the web site! Subscribe to ensure you receive all ‘05 TKD&KMA`s |
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Molum Combat Arts Honour Society Yap Suk Dai Ji Award This is to certify that Stuart Anslow has obtained the privilege of Honourary Senior Yap Suk Dai Ji (Discipleship) within the Molum Combat Arts Association. With all rights and privileges appertaining to that status within the organization. Given under the authority of the Molum Combat Arts Association, August 1st, 2004, in the city of Whiteland, IN, Signed Timothy J White, Director, Shihan 7th Dan Molum Combat Arts Association |