MacKenzie grabs gold in karate
Vacaville Christian High graduate Kiera MacKenzie is the best karate fighter in the heavyweight women’s division in the state of California and third best in the United States.
But MacKenzie, who usually participates in about 20 karate tournaments a year, hadn’t had a fight since March 8. That’s because California COVID regulations preclude any contact sports.
But Texas allows karate competition. So when MacKenzie and Jim Ernest, her coach at Ramtown Karate in Dixon, got wind of a tournament in early December in Dallas, they jumped at the chance.
MacKenzie came back from the competition, the Suzuki Cup, with a gold medal in her fighting division and a bronze in kata (a noncontact detailed choreographed pattern of martial arts movements).
The tournament was unique for MacKenzie in that Ernest, playing it safe due to COVID, did not accompany her. But he still did some coaching. The event was live- streamed and MacKenzie’s mom set up a group chat that Ernest joined.
“My coach called me between matches and gave me some pointers just like he would have if he were there,” MacKenzie said. “Then we hung up the phone and I went out and competed again and then he called me back and we chatted a little bit more.”
MacKenzie qualified in July 2019 at the Karate Nationals in Las Vegas to go to Colorado
Springs in January 2020. There she fought six matches in one day as part of the Senior National Team Trials and the Olympic qualifying event. She emerged as the first alternate for the national team.
The competition was stiff at the Suzuki Cup, which included other national team members.
MacKenzie won two matches in her weight class ( plus- 60 kg, around 132 pounds) to take the gold medal. She only had a oneminute break between matches.
She also competed in the women’s open weight class competition but found herself pitted against the top competitor from Venezuela in the under 50kg (110 pounds) weight class. Smaller competitors have an advantage in open weight competitions be
cause they are faster and quicker, while the bigger competitors rely more on strategy and strength.
“In the normal world I would never compete against her,” said MacKenzie, who lost that match.
In kata, she lost her first match to a competitor from the karate school that hosted the tournament who made it to the finals. But MacKenzie came back to win in the second round to earn the bronze medal.
Overall, she felt good about her performance.
“California has essentially been closed, where all these other states like Texas and Florida have been open,” she said. “So they have the ability to go in and train almost normally whereas we don’t. We had a substantial amount of hurdles that we have to jump through every day just to open the karate school let alone train at a national or Olympic level. So I was pretty pleased. My coach and I were really happy with the results.”
She noted the difficulty of training without contact with another fighter.
“When you don’t have that constant feedback of OK, that worked and that didn’t, everything’s sort of a surprise,” she said. “You get in the ring and you’re like, ‘OK, now I have a person.’ And so all the things that I’ve just done on a bag for the last nine months, I have to watch out for the bag hitting back.”
Her last competition in early March was at a tournament in Phoenix, Ariz.
“We had no idea that that would have been the last time any of us got to put on our pads and fight again for nine months,” she said. “That’s a really long time. But when everything closed around the 15th of March, suddenly it was all gone. So it was pretty crazy.”
The dojo at Ramtown, where MacKenzie serves as an instructor, is still open for outdoor classes, with masks and sanitizing required due to COVID. She is also taking online classes at Woodland Community College, where she is studying for a degree in business with a focus on getting a real estate license.
MacKenzie was the starting point guard and captain of the varsity basketball team at VCS for four years and all-league for three. She played three years of varsity soccer and was all-league all three as a goalkeeper.
She suffered a serious Achilles tendon injury her senior year. Her doctor told her she would never play sports again and that included karate. MacKenzie proved him wrong.