Martial arts is an exciting sport and form of art. Throughout history, there have been hundreds of martial art forms. The most common ones in the United States today are Karate, Taekwando, and boxing in no specific order. While our school has a boxing team, we do not have a karate team. Luckily, there are plenty of events and tournaments that students all around the Valley can take part in. One such event is the Japan Karate Association National Tournament. One of our students, Jayden Chao, won the tournament and is the 2022 National champion. We sat down with him and asked a few questions about the tournament and his experiences.

The first thing we wanted to know was what the JKA is. He said that “The Japan Karate Association (JKA) is a traditional, Japanese Shotokan karate organization that is an affiliate with various JKA clubs all across the US as well in over more than 100 countries in the world. It is also the oldest, largest, and most prestigious karate organization in the world.” We also asked him to talk more about the tournament and how people could participate. According to him, “One of our JKA dojos hosted the National tournament in New Orleans, Louisiana. How it works is that any participating JKA dojo or club in the nation, as well as invited individuals that were affiliated with the JKA or were affiliated with the Shotokan style, were allowed to participate in the tournament then they would be allowed to participate.”

The most important question we wanted an answer to was about his personal life. Specifically why he got into Karate and how. “I have been doing karate for about seven years now. I initially began to learn how to fight in self-defense, and I was interested to try something new. After doing karate for most of my life now, meeting new people and being able to travel worldwide for competitions is what I love about Karate. I enjoy doing karate because it has been something I have put my time and effort into for quite some time, and the people and friendships you are able to build along the way can last a lifetime.”

Just for fun, we asked him one more question, “If you had an endless supply of money and could go anywhere in the world, where would you go and why?” His response was “If I had an endless supply of money, I’d probably travel everywhere, but I would like to go back to Japan or someplace in Asia because of all the good eats as well as the people there are really nice and respectful, not just toward other people, but toward the environment as well.”

We are proud of Jayden and his award-winning performance at the National Karate Tournament. We hope that every student can do their best to pursue their dreams and strive to make the impossible possible, Go Knights!