Sifu’s Corner
I am once again writing this article following our annual Awards Party, which was held Feb.20 at St.George Hall (our largest to date, 84 all told). Congratulations to all of the award winners! It had me reminiscing back to when we used to cram into the basement of the Lai Lai restaurant in Kitchener to sit down to what seemed like a 20-course meal! You could always tell the party veterans because they knew to pace themselves on the
first few courses! We’ve grown in size considerably since then, but it’s still fun to think back to some of the good times we had back in the day.
Speaking of growth, this February has been much busier than normal, with new students joining all of our age programs. I would like to formally welcome all of the new families to the Academy! We will do our best to give you the best possible introduction to kung-fu and we hope it becomes a lifelong activity that you can benefit from and enjoy!
I extend my gratitude to the members of our Lion Dance team! As we enter The Year of the Monkey, we had our fullest performance schedule yet. On January 30th, we even had one team in Guelph and another in Waterloo performing at the same time! The team experienced some very well received shows, which I attribute to Sifu Robin’s patient teaching and Sifu Sydney’s watchful eye at our weekly practices. There are some photos and videos up on the Facebook Group site for the Academy.
Our Competition Team is into full gear again with practices held on Wednesday evenings and Sunday mornings. A lot of new members joined the team this year. I am eager to see their skills develop under the enthusiastic guidance of Sifus Cory, Greg, Mark, Lorna and Spencer!
The coming months are as action packed as ever. March includes our ever popular Five-Animal March Break Camp, plus some special classes for our teenage students taught by Sifu Anne. Make sure you reserve April 16th on your calendar for our annual in-house tournament (Shiai). We are also hosting a special knife defence seminar in the same month, plus we have the CKKA Convention on the April 23/24 weekend.
Our grading dates are set from now until the end of June too. Youth and Juniors have opportunities to test on March 19, April 30 and June 18. Adult gradings are planned for June 11 (Novice II) and May 14th (Int/Adv) where we have Sihing Benny and Sije Serena planning to test for their Black Sash!
Thank you to the student body for your generous gifts. As many of you know, I am also an avid cyclist. This year I received a gift certificate to my favourite store, MacPhail’s and a really good mountain biking helmet. The mild winter gave me a chance to test it out right after the party! Works great – thanks so much.