Belter of a club just going from strength to strength
HAVING 20 members selected for the WTKA England team to compete at the Unified world championships in Italy was just one highlight of a busy and successful year for the Burns School of Black Belts.
Now into its eleventh year, the Heaton -based club - which also runs classes in Whitley Bay and Jarrow, has grown into arguably the largest independent martial arts club in the North East with almost 400 registered members.
Rick Burns, founder and head coach, said: “We are unarguably a family club, which provides a strong base for our success.
“The mini dragons (three to seven years) start training at 5.30 on club nights followed by the kids and then the mums and dads, often with the whole family attending across the course of an evening.
“Our headquarters is in Heaton but we also have clubs in Whitley Bay and Jarrow, all managed by coaches who not only compete at the top level but have excellent teaching skills too.
“Some of our younger coaches like Callum Dillon and Geri Sword have grown up competing for the club and have developed through regional and national tournaments into world champions.
“They are now passing on their experience and knowledge to the next generation of competitors.
“Callum manages the Jarrow club while studying at university and competing at tournaments around the country on a regular basis.”
Burns added: “I am articularly proud of my group of teenagers who take great pride in looking after the younger students, coaching them during the week and on a Saturday morning - then supporting them as they take their first tentative steps on to the mats when they begin competing.”
The competition season begins in February and the club’s core tournament schedule is based around Revolution Tournaments and WTKA tournaments, which includes hosting the Revolution North East England Open in December.
The recent World Championships in Pisa saw competitors from BSBB bring back in excess of 100 medals from what is the biggest martial arts event of its type in the world.
Twenty members of the club were selected to be part of a 96-strong WTKA England team at the prestigious cometition.
Held over four days, the WTKA Unified World Championships is recognised as the biggest amateur martial arts event in the world with more than 70 countries competing.
Qualifying events were held over the course of the first two days.
As hoped, many of the team – including Steve Redshaw at his first championships – reached multiple finals across a wide range of disciplines against very strong competition.
The first day is traditionally weapons combat day and categories are fought through to their conclusion.
True to form in a discipline which has historically been dominated by the English team, it turned out to be a great day for BSBB with gold in their categories for Molly and Harry MacDowell, Tegan and Jasmine Burns and Mikey Winter.
On finals day the team arrived with high hopes of success in the points fighting and forms disciplines.
Geri Sword was outstanding in the point fighting arena, defeating opponents from Italy, Spain, Scotland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic to win gold in two weight categories and narrowly losing out to a very good Romanian girl to take silver in a third.
She followed this up by anchoring the girls’ team with Layla Patrickson and Amie-Beth Ferrey to victory in the final against Scotland and won a further gold with Winter in the team forms.
It was not just the youngsters, however, who came off the mats with gold.
Husband and wife Gary and Simone Sansom both turned in wonderful performances to win their adult weight divisions.
The club’s most successful fighter Jonjo Boyes won gold in both the points and continuous categories.
Burns added: “Aside from the pride I took in my team bringing back so many medals, I was quite chuffed to return to competition myself and prove I could still compete with the best by bringing back gold from the adult open handed forms category.
“Next year we hope to build on our success on the mats and our focus is to repeat or better our performance at the World Championships, which will again be held in Italy.
“We will also be looking to expand by moving our headquarters to larger premises.
“There we will be able to hopefully increase the classes and services we provide such as sports massage, more classes aimed at general fitness and better all-round facilities for our members.
“We are always happy when new members turn up.
“I feel we provide an incredibly positive and supportive environment, not just for the youngsters but their parents too.”.