Re­bec­ca Mo­hammed ex­e­cut­ed well in the Women’s Ka­ta at the 13th an­nu­al Shotokan Karate-do In­ter­na­tion­al Fed­er­a­tion (SKIF) World Cham­pi­onships in the Czech Re­pub­lic in Ju­ly 15-21 but was elim­i­nat­ed in the quar­ter­fi­nal round.

Mo­hammed was part of a five-mem­ber team from the lo­cal branch of SKIF, who rep­re­sent­ed T&T in­clud­ing fel­low com­peti­tors Jen­nifer de Sil­va and Stephon Mar along with the head of the del­e­ga­tion and pres­i­dent of SKIF KG TT, Ce­leste Not­ting­ham and coach and di­rec­tor, Ian Sam­my.

Over­all, the T&T team did rea­son­ably well in an event which had teams from 50 coun­tries in the group phase of the com­pe­ti­tion.

Both Mo­hammed and De Sil­va com­pet­ed in the women’s 20-30 age-group cat­e­go­ry, which had 60 com­peti­tors. Mo­hammed pro­gressed nice­ly through the open­ing phase but was even­tu­al­ly elim­i­nat­ed in the quar­ter­fi­nal round. De Sil­va was elim­i­nat­ed in the first round.

Mar com­pet­ed in the Men’s Ka­ta 20-39 age-group which had some 213 par­tic­i­pants. He per­formed ad­mirably but was al­so elim­i­nat­ed in the first round.

Dur­ing the event, the Sri Chin­moy One­ness-Home Peace Run Re­lay Torch was in Hradec Kralove. The run­ners car­ry­ing the torch were present at the Cham­pi­onship with each coun­try hav­ing the op­por­tu­ni­ty to bear the torch at the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny on Ju­ly 20.

“It was a proud mo­ment for us, rep­re­sent­ing T&T and to be a part of this very spe­cial event,” said Sam­my, who ex­pressed great pride in the team for their fear­less­ness and in­spir­ing mode of com­pe­ti­tion.

Not­ting­ham was al­so quite pleased with the team’s per­for­mance, de­spite the many chal­lenges faced in get­ting the team ready for the tour­na­ment. She added that she would “re­al­ly ap­pre­ci­ate greater in­ter­ven­tion by the au­thor­i­ties/cor­po­rate en­ti­ties to­wards fi­nanc­ing sim­i­lar ven­tures”.

How­ev­er, praise went to all con­trib­u­tors and donors for pro­vid­ing the team with the op­por­tu­ni­ty to not on­ly vis­it the Czech Re­pub­lic but al­so par­tic­i­pate and ap­pre­ci­ate a dif­fer­ent cul­ture and make new con­tacts.

“In par­tic­u­lar, SKIF wish­es to ac­knowl­edge the kind con­tri­bu­tions of TCM, Re­pub­lic Bank Ltd, Uni­com­er, Caribbean Fi­nance Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed and all oth­er well-wish­ers and sup­port­ers for their gen­er­ous con­tri­bu­tions and en­cour­age­ment, which aid­ed in pro­vid­ing trav­el to the del­e­ga­tion,” said Sam­my.

Next on the agen­da for SKIF KG TT is host­ing its 11th Na­tion­al Cham­pi­onships on Sep­tem­ber 28 which be­gins its prepa­ra­tion for the 10th SKIF Pan Amer­i­can Cham­pi­onships which will be held in Mex­i­co from Au­gust 19-22, 2020.

Sam­my said, “SKIF KG TT is a Karate-do or­gan­i­sa­tion es­tab­lished with the pri­ma­ry man­date of pro­mot­ing and build­ing char­ac­ter through the art of Karate-do. SKIF KG TT caters for per­sons be­tween the ages of four years and old­er, with the dif­fer­ent pro­grammes they of­fer, and they use karate to re­in­force and in­stil pos­i­tive val­ues, at­ti­tudes and be­hav­iours among its mem­ber­ship.

“Through the train­ing regime, in­di­vid­u­als de­vel­op val­ues such as hon­esty, dis­ci­pline, cour­tesy, in­tegri­ty and re­silience. SKIF KG TT is phi­los­o­phy is steeped in tra­di­tion­al karate-do val­ues, as a re­sult en­gag­ing and par­tic­i­pat­ing in lo­cal, re­gion­al and World Cham­pi­onships are among the many av­enues the or­gan­i­sa­tion us­es to ac­com­plish its goals to de­vel­op bal­anced and em­pow­ered per­sons.”