Category: Uncategorized Page 59 of 76

As each child enters the room for karate class, they bow, as a sign of respect. They do the same when they leave. In between, master instructor Willie Coleman imparts a few other lessons.

About discipline. About responsibility. About leadership.

The karate class is one of the many programs offered at St. Philip’s Episcopal Church designed to reach out to the community. And it seems to be working.

Coleman said that students who have had trouble in school with attitude and anger management problems have improved in the four months they’ve been taking the karate course.

“They went from getting D’s to B’s to A’s,” he said as he kept a watchful eye on the dozen or so students in attendance one recent night. “The attitude change was tremendous.”

More than just grades have improved. The discipline and exercise have helped some of the students who were at risk for diabetes improve their sugar levels, he said. Attitudes also have improved. Thirteen-year-old Jarren Hunley, who has earned his second belt since starting the class, was a self-described bully. What he learned in karate class changed all that.

“It helped,” he said. “I learned how to stop being a bully. I learned about respect.”

Coleman said that students who bully others are penalized by having to fight three others in class. “They see what it’s like to face a bully,” he said.

Coleman started the class with another instructor, Bruce Daniels, and has been working with St. Philip’s to bring the program to the Fernhill Road church’s East Side neighborhood for a very modest voluntary fee. Parents and grandparents are often on hand. Jeremiah Jones, who comes to watch his grandson, 12-year-old Niles, called it “a great experience for the kids.”

“It keeps them out of trouble. It gives them something positive to participate in. They get a lot out of it,” he said.

The Rev. Gloria Payne-Carter, pastor of the historic church, said the karate program took an empty space at the church and filled it with energy and children.

The class is just one of the many ways St. Philip’s is reaching out to its community.

“This past summer, we ran a summer program through the parish center engaging about 20 young people, ages 10 to 17,” Payne-Carter said.

She said the focus of that program was to encourage the young people to provide service in their immediate community. They did so by cleaning people’s yards, cutting their grass, planting flowers and visiting the City Mission.

“We wanted to instill in them the principles of Martin Luther King,” she said. “To give back to the community.”

The centerpiece of the community outreach, she said, is the food pantry, with distribution on Wednesdays and Thursdays.

OLYMPIC medallist Sarah Stevenson has been crowned Sunday Times Sportswoman of the Year following an emotional few months.

The tae kwon do ace who tragically lost both her parents to cancer within weeks of each other said she was shocked to receive the prestigious accolade.

Sarah said: “I’m more used to handing out these awards, not receiving them.

“I just never expected to win so it’s an amazing honour for me and also for tae kwon do.”

The award follows public outrage after no women made the shortlist for the BBC Sports Personality of the Year award.

The 2008 bronze medallist had recently taken time out to care for her parents Diana, 63, who was diagnosed with terminal cancer in January and died last month, and her father Roy, 63, who died from a brain tumour in July.

But despite dealing with her parents illness, in May Sarah went on to win a gold medal at the World championships – dedicating it to her mum and dad.

The 28-year-old received the prestigious trophy ahead of swimmers, Keri-Anne Payne and Rebecca Adlington plus Hayley Turner, the first woman to win two Grade One races.

Dorothy Tyler, 91, who won the first of her two Olympic high jump silver medals at the 1936 ‘Hitler’ Olympics in Berlin, presented Sarah with her award at the paper’s Wapping headquarters.

It rounded off a memorable day for Sarah who earlier collected the SJA Committee Award from the Sports Journalists’ Association.

“It’s quite apt at the moment that so many great women are being recognised for the effort and hard work they have put in to their sport.

“I am really grateful and this award is for all the women out there who have achieved great things but maybe not have been recognised.”

“I just really appreciate being given this honour,” added Sarah whose trophy was presented in front of an audience including London 2012 chief, Sebastian Coe.

“And to collect it from a lady like Dorothy who competed in an era when sportswomen were treated even less favourably was something I’ll never forget.”

Sarah, who has opted not to compete at the French Open in Paris this weekend, is the 24th recipient of the Sunday Times accolade.

Past champions include Dame Kelly Holmes, Dame Ellen MacArthur and Victoria Pendleton.

And despite the deaths of parents the former Don Valley pupil is determined to focus on her dream to become Olympic champion in London next year.

“I wouldn’t go there for anything else,” she said. “I will go there to do my very best to get that gold.”

A diabetic for the past 15 years, Al Cammarono, 45, has struggled to lose weight and maintain a healthy diet. Two years ago Cammarono began training at Iannuzzo’s Karate School, and today he is proud to unveil a new body, 60 pounds lighter. Along with the physical benefits he has gained through training, Cammarono has also received nutrition counseling from the instructors at the karate school.

Iannuzzo’s Karate School is proud to unveil a recent student success story of a man struggling with diabetes who successfully lost 60 pounds through martial arts training.

Al Cammarono, 45, has been a student at Iannuzzo’s Karate School in Central New York for the past two years. Before training at Iannuzzo’s, Cammarono took between eight to ten different pills a day because of his diabetic condition. As a truck driver, Cammarono was on a busy schedule that also required a lot of physical work and heavy lifting. He struggled to lose weight and eat healthy foods because of the kind of food that was available to him while traveling. He made attempts to lose weight through different exercise techniques and diet changes and was unsuccessful until he started training at Iannuzzo’s.

Although he didn’t immediately see results, Cammarono said that after he started training he began to feel better. After several months of training, Cammarono began to see results and was pleased with his progress. “I never realized how out of shape I was until I started training,” he said. “I look back at pictures from then and there’s no comparison, I lost sixty pounds.”

Cammarono set a goal to lose weight when he began training and that was his main focus. “In the beginning I didn’t care about earning the belts but the more you work and the more effort you put in the more results you see and the better you feel,” he said. “It then became a goal and I figured I might as well see it through, it was a personal goal to succeed and now I feel like I can do anything.”

Along with the physical training at Iannuzzo’s, Cammarono also receives nutritional counseling from Rick and Julia Iannuzzo. Cammarono believes there is a balance between diet and exercise that he needed in order to stay healthy.

“The exercise is awesome, but it’s definitely a marriage between the diet and the exercise,”Cammarono said. Cammarono says he’s been able to create a balance between diet and exercise while traveling constantly because of the Iannuzzo’s help. While he’s on the road, Cammarono often calls Rick and Julia for nutritional advice and for answers to some questions he may have while out of town.

Two years after he began training, Cammarono is now down to taking one pill a day and is considered pre-diabetic. His training at Iannuzzo’s has created a total lifestyle change for himself. Not only has he lost a significant amount of weight, Cammarono has also increased his flexibility and maintained his balance, two things that typically begin to decrease over time.

Cammarono hopes that his story can motivate others to make the same lifestyle change that he has made. “If my positive words will help somebody else then I think that’s just awesome,” he said. “If I can help one person better his or her life than it’s well worth it.”

Iannuzzo’s Karate School has also developed an online program, http://www.internationalkarateschool.com, for those beyond the Central New York span who want to train. Internationalkarateschool.com is designed for men, women and children of all ages. The program enables Martial Arts enthusiasts to earn black belts in the comfort of their own home and on their own time. To learn more about the online karate programs available please visit internationalkarateschool.com

The Braille Institute in Anaheim teaches blind students how to adjust to life in what they call the sighted world. Most often, that means classes in typing or navigation, but not always.

Thuy Tran tightens her black belt and waits for instructions. Twenty fellow blind students are lined up in formation to practice tae kwon do. With their white canes outstretched, they punch the air to ward off invisible predators.

Tran is the only black-belt student in the room. Her sighted teachers from Shambhala Martial Arts use touch and speech cues to guide students through a series of moves that are mostly reserved for self-defense.

It took five years for Tran to earn the belt. Now she glides around the room giving pointers to her fellow students.

“The reason why I’m actually really proud of my black belt is because he gave me no special treatment,” Tran said. “I was required to do everything the other black belts had to do. He didn’t say, ‘Oh, you can’t see, so let’s give you a thinner board.’ Or he didn’t say, ‘You know you can’t see, so we’re not going to have you spar.’” Tran laughed.

Tran began losing her vision at age five when she was diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa, a hereditary disease that kills eye cells. Despite her decaying vision, Thuy attended regular high schools around Anaheim and went on to college.

She hoped to live a normal life, but a bout of extreme dizziness struck and her vision got worse.

“It was hard for me to even walk around my own house, let alone out on the streets, so I dropped out,” Tran said. “And for maybe like four years I had no idea what I was going to do with my life, and I was at home a lot and trying to ask myself what I was going to do. Am I going to go back to college? Am I going to find a job? And that’s when, you know, my vision started getting worse and that’s when I decided, OK, it’s time to go to Braille.”

The tae kwon do classes helped Tran gain confidence. She also learned the art of quiet mind, a martial arts technique that increased her awareness of her surroundings inside and outside of class.

“There has never been a point when I had to use my self-defense, but there has been times when people snuck up on me and I’d hit them,” Tran said, laughing. “That was bad because one of the people that did that to me was my mom, and I turned around and hit her straight in the stomach and I was like, ‘Mom, you’re not supposed to sneak up on me!'”

With a black belt around her waist, Thuy Tran hopes to get a full-time job and move out of her mom’s house. Next, she wants to try a different set of moves — and become a full-time dance instructor.