Florida Atlantic University (FAU) Branch, U.S.A. / January 2009 - Contributors: Dr. C. L. Tondo, Branch Master / Drew Nathanson, Secretariat

The year of 2008 was a good first year for our FAU branch. We started our branch with a total of 10 students (4 transfers from the Miami Branch) in January of 2008 with a permanent home at the arena gym on the FAU Boca Raton campus.

Our new kenshi (under the direction of Tondo-sensei, coach Eduardo Widholzer, and assistant coaches Richard Moore and Drew Nathanson) seemed to find the balance that Shorinji Kempo brings to our lives. Like all new students, they worked hard to learn balance, punches, kicks, rolls, and the basic movements.

By May of 2008, our branch had been officially sanctioned by WSKO. While we lost 2 kenshi due to school and work schedules, by the end of the year we had 4 new students. This brings our class size to 12. We have had many FAU students come by and observe our classes. We hope that some of them will decide to join us at the start of the Spring Semester in 2009.

In other news, one of the senior students, Drew Nathanson, achieved the rank of shodan in September, while Tondo-san and Eduardo-san passed their sandan test in October at the North American Taikai in California. Our assistant coach, Richard Moore, is studying for his nidan examination early in 2009. Four of the kenshi that started with us in January reached the rank of sankyu in November.

If we have a few achievements so far, it was due to the kind help of Tanaka-BM (Portland Branch), Onaka-BM (Seattle Branch), Dr. Yokoyama-BM (Boise Branch),

Dr. Messersmith-BM (FIU Branch), and three people at WSKO: Uebayashi-san, Nakayama-sensei, and Onishi-sensei (Secretary General). Many thanks!

All in all, it was a very good start for our new dojo. We look forward to an even better year to come.

Our best wishes of a great year to our large Shorinji Kempo family.

 

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