Great success at the RITA Irish Open!

We were in DCU for the RITA Irish Open, competing across age and weight categories with a full team of 8 adults and children. Many thanks to the organisers for a very enjoyable & well run tournament, and to all the competitors and coaches for a high quality of the competition!

The adults worked hard to earn their medals against some serious competition and multiple rounds, and our team had great success in patterns. John earned Gold in III and IV Degree patterns, the third patterns Gold in a row for himafter the INTA Nationals & ITA Nationals. Excellent work also to our red belt competitors, with Gold for Cathy & Silver for Shirley in red & black veteran patterns! And our colour belts Soukeina & Janos brought back Gold in Green belt patterns & in Yellow belt patterns!

In terms of sparring, a few of our competitors ended up fighting their colleagues, and we witnessed some really nice technical fights.

Cathy and Shirley fought each other and earned Gold and Silver respectively, with a technical & very high tempo performance! Deirdre and Soukeina also fought each other and earned Gold and Silver respectively, showing excellent movement & technique demonstrated by both our ladies!

The men did very well also, with John earning his second Gold of the day in heavy weight sparring! Janos also snatched the Gold with a great performance & unanimous decision for our competitor.

Our young competitors, Qisya and Grace, also fought very had and Grace earned herself a Bronze medal in her first fight ever!

John and Deirdre finished the day by ocmpetiting in Power and Special Techniques respectively. John earned Gold in Power, with a flawless performance where John got 5 out of 5 breaks! Deidre brought back Gold as well in Special Tech, despite the competition going to several rounds of play off! Deirdre kept her focus and remains unbeaten in Special Tech.

Special thanks to Derek Flynn Photos for taking and sharing so many good pictures of our students on Sunday!