JWSKMA SUCCESS AT OPEN TOURNAMENT!
OK, so in the past we have done OK at competing in "closed" WKSA tournaments. But there was always the question of how well we would do against other styles of martial arts.
Well now we have started to answer that question!
At the recent NAS (National ALL STYLES) tournament held recently in Birmingham, we took 18 students to compete.
Every one of them came home with at least one trophy, several with more than one.
Considering that this was a competition attended mainly by Karate students with judges from Karate schools this was a tremendous result. We did have some problems getting used to the rules on sparring as they were very different from what we have done in the past. But this has just given us something to work towards for another time.
The nature of the groups in this competition had the effect of placing school owner SBN John in the same group as some of his students. In the musical forms section he was competitng aganst JKN Angela and in the Demonstration section He was competing WITH JKN''s Angela and Ryn but against DBN Steve Reynolds and his family. IN both events John came aout victorious but he said that he would have been happy if his own students had beaten him as that would show how good he was as an instructor!

FOUR MORE BLACK BELTS AND ANOTHER TOURNAMENT SUCESS!
After at least four years hard work we are pleased to report that four more students of our school have achieved the rank of 1st degree Black Belt!
Husband and wife, James and Clare Scott, Michael Frill and Connor Prince (whose parents are already Black Belt students) were awarded their Black Belt certificates by World Grandmaster, Kuk Sa Nim during the evening Masters demonstration following the Scottish tournament in May 2009.
During the same event the students saw school owner, SBN John presented with a trophy for 5th position in the schools competition. This was a very close contest and we were only beaten by 7 points for fourth place by Glasgow school.
The new black belts are pictured here with SBN John and Kuk Sa Nim.
Well done all of you!

MORE SUCCESS FOR KSW LANCASTER!
KSW Lancaster completed a fantastic year of sucess recently when we brought back a plaque for thrid place in the UK Championships. 40 students made the long trip to Birmingham for the competition which included all belt levels from white belt to 3rd dahn black belt.
Once again our students excelled themselves and the medals came in thick and fast. One student Edward Jones managed to bring home no less than THREE gold medals out of the sames number of events!
Another junior student, Daniel Reynolds, was competing on his 6th birthday and won TWO gold, and one bronze medals.
All in all it was a fantastic day.
ALthough we did not manage to retain our status as UK Champions, we need to realise that we have competed in no less than FIVE tournaments this year. Two have been in England, one in Scotland, one in Spain and one in the USA. In all five of thes we have finished in the top ten, something no other club have ever achieved. Another statistic is that in the last four years we have finished in the top five in the UK Championships, again, a unique achievement and one to be proud of!
WELL DONE EVERYONE!

LANCASTER INVADES SCOTLAND...AGAIN!
Once again a team from KSW Lancaster has successfuly "invaded" Scotland! Although, according to once prominent Scottish KSW school owner, Lancaster is actually IN scotland so it doesn''t count! However the fact remains that around 40 students from our club travelled to the second ScottishTournament, held this year in Edinburgh, and managed to improve upon their impressive 3rd place position of last year to gain 2nd place, being beaten only by a great team from Livingston.
There are too many success stories to publish here, but two events worth mentioning were the promotion of our club''s 4th Black Belt student, Georgia Lowthian and the fact that JKN Ryan Hunter, who won the Junior 1st Dahn Grand Champion trophy in the Spanish Tournament in April, repeated his success by winning the same award at the Scottish competition!
Altogether, it was a very successful event and some students were so excited about their success that the following week they travelled down to Kings Lynn in Norfolk to take part in the European Championships as well!
As for JKN Georgia, she took part in both the Scottish tournament AND the European tournament one week later. At the first she entered as a DBN in the second as a JKN and she was successful in winning medals at both grades! Another first for our club.

EUROPEAN CHAMPIONSHIPS
As mentioned above, some of our team, having returned victorious from Edinburgh and encouraged by attending our 3rd seminar with World Grandmaster, Kuk Sa Nim, decided to make the journey down to Norfolk for the European competition
Having a team of only 11 students,we didnt expect to come back with the flag, however we were very pleased with our results. We managed to come insode the top ten teams and were inceredibly only 7 points short of the 5th place team, Norwich!
One of our senior students, DBN Kevin Horner, who had not been able to attend the Scottish Tournament, excelled himself by winning the under Black Belt Grand Champion award! Well done Kev!

GRAND CHAMPION OF SPAIN!
JKN (1st Dahn Black Belt) Ryan Hunter was celebrating after spending a week in Spain training hard for his first competition as a Black Belt he took part in the 6th Spanish International KSW Tournament in Barcelona, on Sunday 20th April.
He was one of a team of 8 Students from KSW Lancaster who took part in the event. After a hard fought competition, all 8 of our competitors came away with at least one medal. But Ryan realy excelled himself by taking Gold Medal position in 3 out of his 5 events followed by Silver and Bronze in the other two. This meant that he had the most points in his category and therefor was warded the Junior Grand Champion Trophy which he has managed to "smuggle" home in his suitcase for all to see.
The other students from our club who took part were JKN''S Paul and Angela Prince and Yellow Belts Gary Sowerbutts, Claire Forster, and of course our very own "Smiths" Ann-Marie, Chgris and Alex.
In the evening the 3 Black Belts joined instructor PSBN John, on stage to put on a demonstration of KSW, representing Lancaster as part of the Spanish Black Belt demo team. I am sure that the result will soon be on YouTube, so watch out for a link.
The trip was a resounding success and will hopefully be repeated next year, so watch our for details on this site or at the dojahng.

YES! Its official....Kuk Sool Won of Lancaster is now the UK''s Number One Kuk Sool School, at least for 12 months!
At the UK Championships held on Saturday 24th November 2007, our 40 strong team took part in well over 100 separate divisions. Previously, we had finished 5th in 2005, 2nd in 2006, but this was to be our year and we achieved our dream of taking home the flag which the winning team keeps for one year.. Below you can see a video clip of the presentation of the award. I think we should have got another award for loudest cheer of the night! And just to add to the event we also saw our very first Black Belt promotions. Students (Jo Kyo Nims to give them their correct titles) Angela Prince, her husband Paul Prince and Junior student Ryan Hunter were awarded their 1st Dahn black belts by World Grand Master, Kuk Sa Nim during a ceremony before the evening demonstration.
 I hope that everyone will join me in congratulating all competitors and our new Jo Ko Nim''s on their outstanding success