On the weekend of September (26th and 27th), the USYD Kendo club sent a group of 14 competitors to the Gold Coast to participate in the 2015 Unigames competition. This annual competition is huge: Universities from all around Australia send their best uni students to fight and represent them.
This year, the USYD Kendo club managed to (yet again!) produce an excellent result. We won 2 gold medals, 5 silver and 7 bronze. Our club did particularly well in both Women’s Kyu and Women’s Dan Kendo competitions, with Man Yan (Minty) Ma and Mingrui (Mory) Zhao respectively getting first place in each. In the Open team division, our team (consisting of Man Yan (Minty) Ma, Ernani Contursi, Mingrui (Mory) Zhao, Katrina Amos, Vincent Firman) fought its way to the final and finished in second place.
The full results of 2015 Australian University Games Kendo Competition are available here.
From left to right: Man Yan (Minty) Ma, Ernani Contursi, Mingrui (Mory) Zhao, Katrina Amos, Vincent Firman
Lastly, our Kyu Division team (Yihan (Anna) Lu, Elizabeth Tran, Michael Lotsaris, Alexander Greenhalgh, Noelia Isla, Chen Gong, Kai Kikuchi) came tied third—an outstanding achievement considering that it was their first ever competition!
From left to right: Kai Kikuchi, Noelia Isla, Alexander Greenhalgh, Michael Lotsaris, Yihan (Anna) Lu
Overall, the Unigames competition was a huge success. Our competitors all did their very best to represent our club and university both inside and out of the dojo. I hope everyone is keen to get back into training so that we can do even better for next time!
Mingrui (Mory) Zhao
Ernani Contursi
Kai Kikuchi
Elizabeth Tran
Congratulations! USYD Kendo
Gold Coast
