My criteria for Student of the Year is simple otherwise I would have to give too many awards out.
- Only 2 winners.
- One Male and One Female
- One from Tottenham and one from Leytonstone
- Ideally between blue and red belt, if I had a choice
- Under 18 if I had a choice
- Has improved a lot during the year. Tournaments don’t count
We have few ladies at Tottenham, so I had to choose the male from Tottenham and female winner from Leytonstone.
Amongst the guys at Tottenham, V Nyugen is probably the amongst most skilled student and could probably pass a Black Belt grading in 3 months, if he knew the patterns. N Zimmerman is the fittest and very mature student, they kind of boy parents want as a son.
But, the male Student of the Year is D Lardner.
I cannot believe I am awarding D Lardner the Student of the year as there was I time I wanted to kick him out of the club due to his attitude. But in many ways, he reminded me of myself at his age, ie full of . . . baloney.
I, also an old skool expert in baloney, I recognise and understood good baloney and felt he was sent to me as punishment for the baloney I gave my teachers and parents when I was younger. I grew out of it, and Dexter has finally outgrown that stage in his life and become good young man that we can be proud of proud of. Just. He might even become a role model for the younger ones in future, but I am going to pick on him for the stress he gave me in the beginning.
We have a lot of good female students at Leytonstone.
M Tapper is highly skilled, athletic and motivated. She has done previous martial arts before she joined us. I Coleman, is a fighting prodigy. If I can get her to Black belt, she will be unbeatable. When I get the chance, I like to pair her with Catherine even though she is only a green belt. And A Bejenariu too. Lots of choices
But the Female Student of the Year is R Grigaliunaite.
When students join my club, I like to guess how long they would stay before they give up. I gave R Grigaliunaite a month. She has now been with us over a year and is one of the best students. And sadly I don’t tell her that often enough. Her patterns are good but as we are a “fighting” club, I was worried how she would fare in sparring. Whenever I ask, how she is doing, her standard reply is a “thumbs up”. I particularly worry when she spars with Nicholas, but she digs deep and hangs in there. True fighting spirit.
Now both Ms Grigaliunaite and D Lardner have improved and grown significantly over the last year that they deserve “Student of the Year, But, the NLTKD is blessed with abundance of highly skilled students and we have no bad students. I know I don’t say it often enough, but I am very proud of each of you. Most of you have very high fitness level and skills. Next year I hope we have more female students at Tottenham so that the guys at Leytonstone get a chance.
And for the record the previous winners are
- 2017 L La Crette and V Vasiura
- 2016 C. Craig-Mellentin and T. Truong
- 2015 Oliver Charles and Catherine Henryanto (Student of the years because the were both the GTI Competitors of the Year. A very tough award to get.
- 2014 Cannot remember?? if you do let me know. also let me know of typos
