A pair of young Judo athletes from Yass have returned from a recent tournament in Melbourne with a haul of medals.
Oliver and Cherriky-Rose Casey, who train at the Ni Bonchi dojo in Canberra, took home a medal of each variety against seasoned competitors.
Oliver took home silver in the Under 13 category after winning three of his four matches, scoring the highest possible score in each of his victories.
As a result, he then decided to compete in the next class up, the Under 15s, where he again performed relatively strongly, winning one of his three matches, enough to take home the bronze.
Meanwhile Cherriky-Rose took home the Gold in the Under 7 category, despite being two years younger than her fellow competitors.
Cherriky’s grandmother Caron said that the gold medal was a surprise to everyone, given that it was her first tournament and that she was competing against older children.
“Even though she fights with the Under 7s and that’s the lowest division, she is only five,” she said.
“The kids she fought were older than her, heavier than her and had higher grade belts.
“She did extremely well to come away with the gold medal.
“We just said to her before she went on to try her best, it’s all about learning and you don’t have to win.
“She didn’t realise that she had won gold and she was a little five year old being a five year old, she wanted to read her Dr Seuss book and then her mother said to her, ‘you’ve won gold’.
“She was very excited, she didn’t want to go in it to win, she wanted to go in it because she genuinely loves Judo.”
What makes the feats even more remarkable is that the pair have only been training in the sport for just over a year, with Oliver setting his sights firstly on qualifying for the upcoming nationals, and then much loftier aspirations in the future.
“Oliver has aspirations for the Olympics,” Caron, his mother, said.
“It was Cherriky’s first tournament and I think it was Oliver’s fifth tournament, and they were really excited and remembering things that they had been going over at training and things that their Sensei had said.
“[Cherriky] is always keen to get to her next coloured belt, she recently got graded to a white/yellow belt.
“That is the next one after white belt and Oliver’s is the orange belt.”
As for what lay ahead for the pair of young martial arts prodigies, Caron said that they are simply happy to be able to show off their medals to their friends at school and back at the dojo in Canberra.
“They are really proud of themselves coming away with a medal and they are excited to go back to the dojo in Canberra and show everyone,” she said.
“They get really good recognition over there and they are happy to take their medals to school as well, especially Cherriky with the show and tell as she’s only in Kindergarten.”
-Tallon Smith