My Karate Class

I’m currently taking my second semester of Karate at the Mount and I love it. I had never taken Karate before coming here, and signed up figuring it would give me some sort of exercise. Since September, I’ve spent my Tuesday and Thursday mornings going across campus to the ARCC for Karate at 8:00 in the morning (why any college student would get up that early is beyond me).

Our teacher, Shihan Dan Soller, is also the executive vice president of the Mount. He’s a very good teacher. Even though we can joke with him, he takes class time very seriously, particularly emphasizing hard work and the will to never give up. He’s been doing Karate since he was 16 and still does it today as an 8th degree black belt, the highest attainable belt in our style, Kyokushin.

Yesterday was the Gashuku for my Karate class. A Gashuku is an intense training session in which Karateka (Karate students) from within our style come from their dojo (training place) to train together. The Spring Gashuku this year was held at the Mount. It is often at the Gashuku that some students test for higher belts. About half of our class tested for a higher belt. Chris, Greg, and I all tested for our yellow belts (it’s our second semester doing Karate). The black belt sempai that tested us didn’t have any written exams for yellow belts, so he kept us in pushup position while he tested us on specifics. If we got questions wrong, we had to do pushups. Later, he asked us to execute certain moves. For example, if we didn’t know what “Hiza geri” meant, we’d have to drop and give pushups. I’m just glad I didn’t have to break a cinder block like Phil, Matt, and J.P. had to do for their blue belt test.

After four hours of the Gashuku, we took part in the belt ceremony. We remove our belts and the Shihans (the higher-level black belts) tie up each of our belts and toss them aside. They put a strong knot in it to show that the belt is old and not to be worn again. They then take the new belts and take turns putting it on themselves for two reasons: to remember when they were at that rank and to pass on their sweat and knowledge to us. I’m very glad to be taking Karate and plan to stick with it the rest of my time at the Mount.