Winning one Northern Ireland title in any sport is a great achievement, however winning four Northern Ireland titles at one championship is pretty special. That’s exactly what Bangor girl Rachael Fleming who attends Glenlola Collegiate achieved at the recent championships held in Lough Moss Leisure Centre, Carryduff. Some seven hundred competitors competed in individual kata, individual kumite and team events for the same disciplines and Rachel, entered in each of them, collected gold in them all!
She was helped by Amy Adair and Lucy Ouldfield in the team kumite and Lucy and Jessica Palmer in the team kata, however Rachael needed no help at all in her individual kata and individual kumite where she quite simply was a class apart.
Coach Kevin Lewis commented “It is by far the best display in any Northern Ireland Championships that I can remember. Rachael was on fire with every performance and our team clooect the most medals ever at a Northern Ireland Championship.”
The rest the squad from the Scrabo and Carnalea clubs also collected a fantastic amount of medals.
Lucy Oldfield added an individual silver for kata to her two team golds.
Competition newcomer Dylan Houston fought out of his skin getting silver in individual kumite and with the help of Christian Boyles and Luke Allen claimed a Northern Ireland title for team kumite.
Luke then went on to add a bronze for team kata with Ben Rylance and Karl Andreasson.
Ben then added another bronze for his individual kumite and Karl a bronze for individual kata.
Brothers Louis and Jacq Watton claimed gold and bronze respectively both in individual kumite. Louis again showing the ability that took him to the recent world championships.
Dean Miller, Dylan Bailie and Darren Calvert got silver in team kumite. Dean then added bronze for silver in team kata with Jordan Lewis and Darren Calvert and another bronze for individual kata.
Doing it with style by a victory of four to nil in the final of the cadets individual kumite Craig Brashaw collected another Northern Ireland title for the team. He then added a silver in his individual kata. His teammate Levi Kane did it the other way round with a Northern Ireland title for her kata and silver in her kumite. Both competitors returned from the world championships last month and were still as sharp as ever.
There were other great performances from Scott Boyd, particularly in his kata event, and from Ben McIlroy in his first big competition in his sparring. Jared Martin, Adam Patterson, Matthew Dales and Jordan Houston also performed really well in kumite all coming close to the medals.
