By Jeff D'Andrea

Locals hope for good showing at Diamond City Tournament

Oct 18, 2011 | 11:00 PM

The Diamond City Open Martial Arts Tournament will attract 200 athletes from all over Western Canada and local athlete Matthias Manicke was born ready.

The 15-year-old is the son of Wolfgang Manicke, 7th Dan Black Belt and head instructor at Aurora Dojo, so Matthias is never far away from a dojo mat.

When asked how his preparation is going for Saturday’s tournament, Manicke said it was great considering the easy access to both the dojo and an instructor.

“I can just walk downstairs and train,” said Matthias, who lives above the Aurora Dojo.
“Sometimes (I train) when I have nothing else better to do.”

The Diamond City Open is the season’s first of 11 qualifiers for the 2012 World Championships in Switzerland and Matthias wishes he can return to the world stage this year after getting in second place in last year’s world tournament in Las Vegas, Nevada.

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“My world experience was pretty good it was fun to compete against people from other countries,” Matthias said.

“It was definitely new for me because I had not done that before. I got runner-up in most of my divisions so I guess next year in Switzerland, I’ll try harder.”

Matthias wasn’t the only one from the Aurora Dojo that had success at the world stage, another was 17-year-old Marcus Merasty, who won three medals, a gold in sparring, a silver in weapons kata and a bronze in open-hand kata against the world’s best.

What makes this feat even better is that Merasty has only been involved in karate for the past two years.

A natural karate warrior, Merasty said his results were simply due to hard work in both the summer and during the season.

“It was pretty good,” said the soft-spoken Merasty. “I had to train a lot though, four times a week we had to come here.”

Those are only two of the competitors from the local Aurora Dojo karate club to be competing as Wolfgang hopes most, if not all of his students will compete as it is an open tournament available to just about anybody. The youngest age group is 4-5 and the oldest is 60+.

“The competition’s about getting better, and see how you stand against everybody. We’ve been training for the last month and a half,” said Wolfgang.

“Ours is the first one after summer break… so everybody’s going to be a little rusty but I don’t have one student that doesn’t want to go, everybody wants to go. They love tournaments and we’re one of the clubs that go to lots of tournaments.”

The Diamond City Open Martial Arts Tournament will take place on Saturday at the Alfred Jenkins Fieldhouse and will start at 10 a.m. and should wrap up around 6 p.m. There are six divisions, kata (forms), weapons kata, sparring, weapon sparring, light kickboxing and sambo (grappling) and all athletes can participate in all divisions if they wish.

The event is a qualifier for both the worlds and the provincial tournament.

jdandrea@panow.com