GUILDFORD ACADEMY OF MARTIAL ARTS

February 14th saw the first Interclub of the year and Guildford was on top form!

The men’s semi-contact was an intense, all-Guildford final between Mark Milne and Jens Henrikson. It was an exciting fight with awesome displays of lightning reactions, attacks and counters. Mark Milne came away with a well-deserved first place, a fantastic achievement!

Helen Milne also came away a winner, this time of the Junior Semi-Contact. She also competed in the Intermediate category and, with her strong focus and excellent timing, achieved 3rd place. Also in this category was Juliet Smith who entered her first competition at Intermediate level. Despite having never competed before, Juliet put up some good fights but narrowly lost out.

More wins came for Guildford from Daniel Engström, who won the +85kg Semi-contact category, with a great mix of techniques from the hands and legs!

Competing in the -75kg were Nick Oliver and Anish Anthony who achieved a well-earned joint 3rd, well done! Also in this category was Hemal Patel who did amazingly well despite it being his first competition.

Cameron Milne fought really well in a very tough group and was unlucky not to get 3rd place. Dillon Millington was also doing extremely well in his category however he had to pull out due to respiratory problems.

In the continuous categories, Jonny Steele flew through to the final very comfortably, winning all his fights in the preliminaries. He then fought really well in the final and was very unlucky not to get the decision as it looked from the outside he dominated his opponent.

Zuzana Krempeska went through to a straight final in the -55kg category, coming away with 2nd place. More importantly, she came up against some extremely tough and more experienced opponents and definitely was giving away a lot in height and weight in the open weight category. However she fought incredibly well, and was thoroughly unlucky not to get 3rd place.

So overall, this was even better than the last interclub with even Master Page commenting on how fantastic the Guildford team was – high praise indeed!

Well done to everyone who fought and a massive thank you to all the students who came just to watch, your support is always gratefully appreciated and makes a huge difference! We are already looking forward to the next interclub in May.