Genryukan Aikido

SOTR Success – Thank you!

I would like to say firstly, a massive thank you to our fantastic team of SOTR instructors Ken Broome, Shaun Hoddy, Chris Stamate, Mick Pratt and Jim Dempster.

Thank you to Jim Dempster, Julian Goldsmith, and Castle Community College who let us use their mats for the event. Thank you SAGA for the amazing venue, and for supplying the food and water.

Next I would like to thank those who helped with all the running around collecting and laying mats, moving tables, selling merchandise, cleaning up, entertaining the juniors, and driving duties. To Julian Goldsmith for looking after the activity on the junior mat. Also to my Mum for making the sandwiches, Yvette and Emma for the cakes & ninjabread men, and to all those who helped us in any way during the event. Thank you so much, and much love to you all. We quite simply could not have done it without you.

Our thanks go to Mark Ball for being on hand with his First Aid skills. He did a fantastic job.

Huge thanks to Rob Darling and Julian Goldsmith for the financial support. Absolutely vital.
Thank you Christophe for doing all the design work for the event, and being so flexible when we changed our minds about things (frequently).

I would like to give a HUGE thank you to everyone who attended SOTR and made it such an unbelievable success. The figures are not in yet, but we’re really hoping to have made a great contribution to SAGA Charitable Trust (will keep you posted).

Congratulations to all those who graded over the weekend. Very well done to all of you.

Lastly I would like to say thank you to the person behind the decision to organise this year’s Seminar. He provided the ideas, the relaxed attitude, and the incredible ability to haggle for the best deals. An exceptional person, and always genuinely kind and humble, he is well deserving of the credit for SOTR 2011. Nice one Paul Smith.

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Good news!

Sport England

We’ve received great news this week as our grant application has been accepted by Sport England (http://www.sportengland.org/). We just have to complete some paperwork and we should soon get funds to acquire brand new mats!

All thanks to the funds from the National Lottery. 🙂

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Sponsored Ukemi

So we did it!

Genryukan Aikido performed their 100 ukemi for SAGA Charitable Trust. A massive thank you to all those who sponsored us. With your help we are helping to provide 2000 villagers in Zambia with a permanent fresh water supply.

Tom, as our resident masochist, decided he would do 200 ukemi. I think after about 130, he started to regret having had the idea. However, he battled on and finished.

Well done to everyone involved.

Participants;
Lee Whitehall
Phil Eyers
Yvette Marshall
Christophe Courtin
Tony Dowling
Tom Davey

You can still contribute and donate via the team’s sponsor page: http://www.justgiving.com/teams/ukemi/

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Ukemi Practice

Unfortunately Lee cannot attend the sponsored ukemi event with everyone else next week, so he said he would do it early. He knocked out the 100 flips in just under 12 minutes. Video evidence provided below (sped up thankfully). Well done Lee, very impressive.

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