With so many really great demonstrations of the form, the judges had a very difficult challenge of their own, making the decision as to which presenters would make the four-place winners’ circle. In the end, I had to make the final decision, based on those candidates placing in the top four places by at least two judges.
I’ve judged many tournaments in kata and I must admit, this was my toughest event!
George Mattson
1st Tournament Results :
After more than three months of work you will find the 4 winners of the Suparenpei Tournament :
- Winner & Platinum Medal : Evgeny Rybin
- Gold Medal : Lionel Reynaud
- Silver Medal : Jannet Okazaki
- Bronze Medal : Olivia Livingstone
The plans for the Future
Following the good spirit of this community, we decided to build the Suparenpei Community website: http://suparenpei.com
The aim is to promote the Fujian kata and encourage other practitioners to learn it. For this a directory is available if a new learner want to contact a specific dojo member of the community.
As said by Mattson sensei, this community is free and there is no question of organization and every serious martial artist is welcome. We will use too this website to keep in touch all together by sharing bunkais and share what we found in this 108 steps kata’.
Lionel
Few words from Kristin
A few words from the person who spent all that time and energy creating the 13 very detailed “segmented” video clips of Suparenpai, enabling such an amazing accomplishment from so many martial artist, Kristin Amirault:
When Sensei Mattson proposed the Suparenpei Project to me I was very hesitant and not at all convinced that I was the right person for the job. I still had many questions about the kata myself, had never taught it to anyone and I was very new to Zoom meetings. But I knew that I should not pass up the opportunity to work with Sensei Mattson, to help promote this kata that I had worked hard to learn and to honour Sensei Victor Swinimer in this way.
However the pressure and nervousness increased a lot when approximately 67 people from various countries signed up! But Sensei reassured me that all would be fine. And it was! I’m so glad that I took up the challenge myself, it has been an amazing experience to get to know the participants and guide them through learning the Suparenpei kata.
20 people completed the challenge and learned the kata. When we started in August I never imagined how fulfilling it would be to watch everyone’s kata progress and improve over the months. Everyone I’ve met through the project has been appreciative & grateful for my time and effort and very supportive of each other. I’m pleased to be part of the community that we have created, I think the entire project became a labour love for all of us.
An added and unexpected bonus for me was how much my understanding and the performance of Suparenpei improved from many many hours of recording and re-recording my kata and studying Victor Sensei’s kata and revisiting Simon Lailey & Bill Galshee’s Suparenpei. I truly feel that Victor Sensei would be pleased and proud of our accomplishments, and honored by what he inspired.
Kristin
Some words from Mattson sensei
What begun as a tribute to a wonderful martial artist who left us way too soon, turned out to be a beginning of what hopefully will become a serious effort by the Uechi community to become closer to the extended family of past and present teachers in China who were and are related in some way or other, to the beloved system of karate now called Uechi-ryu.
The challenge represents the seeds of Superenpei, expanding in understanding, excitement and achievements by all who study and train in this wonderful system,
There is much information that has bee gleaned from old documents, books and papers, written in the Chinese language, that have been translated to English that provide much valuable information on the “forms”, teachers and links to Kanbun Uechi. We hope that much of this information will soon become available to the Uechi community.
I wish to thank Kristin, for all the work she performed during this Challenge, in both creating the segments and for being always available to help members who needed a little help learning the movements of this very, very long and complex form and to Lionel, who did a great job creating the certificates used for this Challenge.
And finally, thanks to all 60 individuals who started with us and tried their best to learn the form, (Hopefully you will find the time and energy in the future to complete the project) and a special thanks and congratulations to the 20 “Super-men & women” who finished the Challenge and demonstrated their extreme motivation, dedication and skill by filming their complete Suparempei and having it played at the last meeting.
My congratulations to all.
George E Mattson
