THE RED CORNER
NEWS AND UPDATES FROM THE NORTH STAR ACADEMY OF MIXED MARTIAL ARTS
WEEK OF OCTOBER 28th, 2024
Happy Monday Team!
I’m writing this on a plane en route from Vienna to Washington, D.C. where I’ll chill for a minute before finally heading back to Philly. Can’t wait to be home!
I’ll touch on the trip in a moment — but wanted to quickly remind parents that this Wednesday, at both our 4pm and 5pm classes, we’ll be running a special Halloween themed Grapplemania games class!
Kids are encouraged (but not required) to wear costumes, and we will spend the class time playing fun, spooky games and cap it off with a costume contest. Please note that glitter, face paint, or any other material that can stain or compromise the mats are not permitted. Students will have roughly 5-10 minutes during class time (after the games) to fully put on their costumes so they don’t need to arrive in full regalia.
If you have any questions about the class, please let us know!
So, on to Vienna.. What an intense experience. You could say I didn’t really travel to Vienna, Austria, but rather to the Hallman Dome (essentially a sports complex) for about 4 days. Early mornings, long nights, and lots of sweat and effort helping coach a dozen Team USA athletes to various levels of success (including some gold medals)!
Let’s get our congratulations out of the way first: congrats to Gianna Vadino on her 2024 Muay Thai World Championship! Gianna took out an extremely accomplished German woman with over 100+ fights and 25+ championships under her belt in a brutal first round TKO. This may have been Gianna’s last amateur fight in her career and we are excited to see what opportunities present themselves in 2025.
Tim Green went 1-1 with a great win over Germany, but dropped a split decision to Portugal in the second round of the K1 divison. K1 here, by the way, is INSANELY competitive and unlike in the US, there is no distinction between pro and amateur in these tournaments so it was not uncommon for professional fighters with double digit experience to be seeded in the brackets.
Great learning experience for us all and I’m excited to come back and share some of that experience with everyone!
Moving forward, we have Tap Cancer Out on the 9th of November, and beyond that the WAKO K1 tournament in Delaware. Things should slow down mid November until January, which is a great time to take some pressure off ourselves and re-commit ourselves to training for fun and creativity. After all, isn’t that the point?
For reference, our full event lineup is below:
- 10/30 — Junior Samurai Halloween Grapplemania classes
- 11/9 — Tap Cancer Out in Hatfield, PA
- 11/22 — WAKO Kickboxing Nationals in Delaware
- 11/28 — Thanksgiving Weekend (schedule TBA)
That’s about it — looking forward to seeing everybody on the mats “tonight” (technically, tomorrow)!
–Coach Jackson
You can find this week’s Monday Mindset HERE
You can find this week’s Junior Samurai Stripe Challenge HERE