On Sunday 29th May 2011, three junior fighters from John Tomlinson’s Grimsby Strike Team travelled to Worcester to compete in the WUMA Battle of England Competition.
Evan Balch (8, sponsored by The Indian Kitchen Restaurant) soon found himself in the boys –145cm advanced semi-contact semi-final. He stepped onto the mat to face a much taller and older fighter. This didn’t faze Evan. He got stuck in right from the start. Evan attacked right from the off. He managed to keep his opponent away with some nice jabbing sidekicks. The only way his opponent felt he could get around these was to do an illegal sweep technique. Evan didn’t go down but it hurt his leg quite badly. Evan was losing 1-0 but soon pulled it back to 2-2 then in the final five seconds his opponent scored leaving Evan to take third place.
Luke Tomlinson (14) was supposed to be in the novice boys’ +165cm semi-contact category, but due to the lack of novices he was moved into the advanced category. Luke had a round robin; the first of his opponents was a huge brown belt. Unfortunately though Luke was defeated 5-3. His next fight went well, Luke dominated the first part, he was getting into his opponent using jabbing sidekicks and then he followed up with the blitz technique. After a minute Luke was winning 4-1 and then his opponent seem to realise that the fight had started and picked up his tempo. Luke tried to defend but unfortunately lost 5-4 and came home with a nice third place trophy.
Daniel Balch (12, sponsored by The Indian Kitchen Restaurant) got off to a flying start in the advanced boys –155cm semi-contact category. His reverse punches kept flying in and the fight was stopped after only 1min 5secs as Daniel had five clear points over his opponent winning 6-1. The semi-final was tough; he stepped onto the mat to face a 3rd Dan black belt. It was a close fight and Daniel scored a nice sidekick run. Unfortunately this was the end of Daniel’s quest for gold and he had to settle for third place.
Daniel had a short rest and then had to step onto the mat again to fight a round robin in the boys advanced –155cm light continuous category. Daniel won both of his fights easily. He used the basic front kick, jab cross techniques, and was able to roll out of the way of some kicks that came towards him. Daniel had done it! First place was his! Winning first place also means that Daniel has qualified to represent the WUMA British Squad in Los Angeles in 2012.
