Plett Martial Arts Academy do Plett proud!

4 students from the Plettenberg Bay Martial Arts Academy, Lojza Pisonic, Osean Booyzen, Aligi Boni and Galliano Boni together with their Sensei Elrie Bosman were chosen to represent South Africa at the 2016 ISKA US Open World Martial Arts Championships in Orlando, USA. We arrived in Orlando on the 3 July and spent the next few days training, acclimatizing, and visiting the various theme parks such a  Disney World, Sea World and Universal Studios. The Championships were held at the Coronado Springs Resort on Friday the 8 and Saturday  the 9 July. The "Plett Boys" were just unbelievable and put in amazing performances coming away with Four World Championship, Five 2nd, Four 3rd, Two 4th and 10 5th place trophies and the most beautiful prestigious one of all being the Grand Champion trophy won by Galliano for his Creative  kata and in so doing not only became the youngest ever participant to represent South Africa but also the first ever South Africa to perform at the Night of Champions live on ESPN television obtaining  score of 9.99 from all seven judges. Basically the Grand Champion trophy is when all the world champion (excluding black belts) in their divisions  come up against each other and the best performance gets awarded the Grand Champion trophy. A truly outstanding achievement which has shot Galliano onto another level and is now being noticed by the martial arts fraternity world wide. This is something that we would never have ever dreamt about and I still have to pinch myself to believe that it has happened. The unbelievable thing was that he almost did not compete. On the Friday there was such confusion and all the divisions were running behind schedule. He was preparing to participate in his Continuous Fighting when I just happened, by utter chance, walk past the ring where he was supposed to be doing his Creative Kata. I immediate realized that they had already started and I went to the centre judge, who did not want to give me the time of day. I shift into another gear and demanded that Galliano o be allowed to participate as I had advised them that he was on another ring. He said to me that he could not allow it and then I told him I was not going to move and wanted him to call the arbitrator. He relented and said that they had two participants to go and if Galliano could be on the mat before they had finished he would allow him to participate. I ran to the other side of the auditorium (which is three rugby field big to give you an idea of the size of the place) I grabbed him and advised the centre judge of that ring that I was taking him to do his kata and he would be back in a short while. As we were running back, my shirt sopping wet, I was pulling off Galliano's protective fighting gear. We managed to get there just as the last participant was finishing his kata. Galliano walked on panting and out of breath and started his kata. When he finished the centre judge looked at me and asked 'is that his creative form?' I nodded my head and immediately thought "oh dear" that obviously wasn't good! He scored. 9.99 from all three judges and awarded the world champion trophy. He was given a green card which I put in My pocket and forget about. At about 16:49hrs I was looking for my lens cap when I pulled out the card and read it. Not knowing what it was all about I asked one of the officials who explained the importance of the card and that he had been entered into the Night Of Champions live on stage in front of thousands of people and live on ESPN television. He said to me "you better hurry as the registrations close in 10 min. Again we ran to another hall and finally managed to get there just in time. The rest is history!  This is also an amazing achievement for Plett Primary. I do not know of any other school with so many martial arts champions. There are many more than the four that went to the States.

A huge thank you Roberto Boni who shared this with us.