Congratulations
to Best Karate’s own Cyndy Yu-Robinson and Marleigh Ryan (age 12) for being part of an AAU USA team of 2 coaches, 24 athletes, 25 parents/guardians at the Interational School Sports Federation (ISF) world games for under 15 years old. Shihan Yu served as one of two National Coaches and Marleigh competed in the Juvenile (ages 12-13) Male Advanced Kata and KUmite categories. They traveled together from the North American Open in Las Vegas, through Detroit to Amsterdam to Belgrade, Serbia.
A few highlights: Medals for Americans: 8 Golds, 9 Silvers, and 10 Bronze, plus a Silver medal for a Team of 3 Cadet Males (boys ages 14-15). Co-Coach Mateo Latic’s knowledge of Bosnian language was super useful in Serbia.
The event had
- 22 sports (including Judo, TaeKwondo and Karate, archery, track and field, back volleyball, etc.),
- 55 countries including Romania, Chinese Taipei, Thailand, Brazil, Guinea.
- More than 3600 athletes in total (last minute registrations from Serbia, Brazil, and India
- 241 US Athletes in 7 sports, 24 in karate
Biggest Lessons Learned:
1) Travel with your competition uniform, gear, and personal essentials b/c someone will always loses a bag (Coaches Mateo Latic and Cyndy both had a 36-hour delay on bag arrival.)
2) Know the rules of the game! US team was well prepared with the required equipment, knew how to break ties, and helped our own and other countries’ competitors to get the most fair outcome.
3) Sometimes, you can beat the other team but you can’t beat the officials. Alas, we saw a lot of bias in kata and kumite scoring.
ISF competition results for the AAU Karate Team:
AAU Karate took home 7 Gold, 10 Silver, 8 Bronze, along with 1 team Silver medal over the course of the ISF Gymnasiade.
The Gold medalists include:
Brandon Ma – Cadet Male Long Weapons
Dominic Esquivel – Cadet Male Short Weapons
Shianne Medlin – Juvenile Female Long Weapons
Sonia Lazos – Juvenile Female Short Weapons
Levi Green – Juvenile Male Long Weapons
Cristiano Perez – Juvenile Male Short Weapons
Sam Stoddard – Cadet Male Heavyweight Sanbon Kumite
The Silver medalists include:
Sadie Sullivan – Cadet Female Long Weapons
Danika Olsen-Bennett – Cadet Female Short Weapons
Kamdean Saager – Cadet Male Long Weapons
TJ Bright – Cadet Male Short Weapons
Sonia Lazos – Juvenile Female Long Weapons & Juvenile Female Individual Kata
Shianne Medlin – Juvenile Female Short Weapons
Cristiano Perez – Juvenile Male Long Weapons
Levi Green – Juvenile Male Short Weapons
Chris Gordon – Juvenile Male Individual Kata
Bronze Medalists Include:
Katelyn Mai Nguyen – Cadet Female Long Weapons & Cadet Female Individual Kata
Paige Pauley – Cadet Female Short Weapons
Kamdean Saager – Cadet Male Short Weapons
Rachael Fowler – Juvenile Female Long Weapons
Madelyne Wissell – Juvenile Female Short Weapons
Benjamin Nascimento – Juvenile Male Long Weapons & Juvenile Male Short Weapons
We can’t wait to see who the next AAU athletes will be to showcase their skills on the international stage. The journey starts here.
#ItAllStartsHere #OneforAAU #ISF #AAUSports