It was most certainly a hot and steamy weekend down in Collingwood Park for the 2014 Summer seminar and grading opportunity. While overall numbers were a little down, it was the largest contingent from Toowoomba in some years, with ten participating on one or both of the days.
As always, there were many valuable tips and lessons learned in the sessions provided by the senior sensei — T. Tsukadaira, K. Kuromochi, J. Isaacs, T. Itakura, G. Nicholas and N. Tamura sensei, and I would also like to thank T. Johnson and T. Sugio sensei for ably assisting to prepare those of us going for our Seitei Iaido examinations on Sunday. All input was very gratefully received and I am certain contributed to the successes on the weekend.
Special thanks to T. Johnson and D. Fitzgibbon san for their administrative efforts in making the weekend run smoothly, and to Ryo Atsumi and Martin Cowan for providing motodachi services during the Kendo gradings.
Toowoomba folk experienced considerable success in their gradings, with all adult kendoka double grading. For Maaike Stehouwer in particular, this represents her third double grade in a row in the space of 12 months!
The results for Toowoomba and Ipswich folk are:
Kendo
- Maaike Stehouwer, ikkyu
- Wan Li Xing, Ikkyu
- Melissa Pierides, gokkyu
- Aaron De Smet, gokkyu
- Cody Dimech, gokkyu
- Alexander Pierides, rokukyu
- Andrew Pierides, rokukyu
Seitei Iaido
- James Archer, sankyu
- Michael Baczynski, sankyu
- Sian Carlyon, sankyu