By Cornelia Izquierdo
Exciting fights at the 17th German Naginata Championship in Leverkusen
This year’s Naginata Championship was exceptional in more than one aspect: After two years of forced pandemic break, the Naginata clubs were finally allowed to come together again to meet & compete. Another notable point were the newcomers to the German Naginata Federation, athletes from the club KuS Dellfeld who were also present this year.
Well known on the other hand were the referees, (Shimpan) Laurence Dumonceau, (4th Dan) Francois Dermine (5th Dan) and David D’Hose (Renshi -6th Dan), who completed a remarkable dozen of referee assignments in Germany with this event. We toll much respect for such a high engagement – THANK YOU!
In total, athletes from four clubs participated in this year’s championship. We regret not being able to welcome our sports friends from Berlin and Potsdam this time, but we hope to see them again soon.
On Sunday, August 7th, five teams gathered in the morning for the Engi competition. The teams had the opportunity to compete against every other team and out of all these encounters Team Da Silva (Post SV Opladen) positioned itself with the third place, Team Göbel (Post SV Opladen / JGU Mainz) reached second, and Team Klose (PSV Mainz) resulted as the winning team.
During the morning event they were still team partners, but in the Shiai competition they fought happily as rivals managing to end up in the final encounter: Marie-Luise Göbel and Andreas Nicol competing against each other for the gold medal. In this encounter Andreas Nicol (Post SV Opladen) could finally decide the fight to his advantage with a strike on the wrist (Kote) and is therefore the former and the new German Champion. Silver went to Marie-Luise Göbel (JGU Mainz) and Bronze went to our newcomer in the federation, Jonas Stock (KuS Dellfeld).
In addition, Jonas was awarded the highly deserved Fighting Spirit prize.
A big hand and congratulations to the athletes!
At this point we would like to acknowledge once more the great commitment of our Belgian referees and thank them for their many, many visits to Germany.
And, because a tournament can never be executed without the tireless efforts of a lot of helping hands, we want to express our gratitude to all supporters and helpers. By saying this, our final thanks go to our hosts, the Postsportverein Opladen, who successfully executed this year’s championships in Leverkusen.
We hope to see each other and more friends soon at the next episode: EUROPEAN CHAMPIONSHIPS IN BRUXELLES!!