Moot karate club keeps members active during lockdown
Although the Villieria Tigers and Tiger Cubs karate club remains closed during the lockdown, they share videos through WhatsApp.
A local karate club has not allowed the national lockdown to stand in its way to keeping people active.
Although the Villieria Tigers and Tiger Cubs karate club remains closed during the lockdown, they share videos through WhatsApp, said Sensei Riaan Coetzee of the club.
“These videos are shared with our students so that they stay active and practiced for when we open again,” he said.
“Each week we give a different task for them to do.”
Coetzee said the club also celebrates its 50th birthday this year.
“As far as we could trace the history of the dojo back, we are the oldest one in the Moot currently,” he said.
He said they were established in 1970.
“Villieria Tigers Shorin-Ryu Shorinkan karate dojo teaches Kobayashi-Ryu, a style of Shorin-Ryu,” he said.
“My own karate career started at this very dojo in 1974, at the tender age of only 13, and I eventually took over the dojo in 1991.”
After practicing judo for some years, Coetzee made the switch to karate and joined the Villieria Tigers dojo.
In 1979, he matriculated and started his two years of compulsory military training in 1980, with the Artillery Corps of the South African Defence Force.
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“After completing my military service, I went back to the dojo, only to find out that none of the students I knew were left,” he said.
While still training with the Villieria Tigers dojo, Coetzee opened his first dojo in Atteridgeville in 1991 and started training his own students, he said.
A year later, the head sensei at the Villieria Tigers dojo retired from karate, and Coetzee stepped in to take over the dojo where he had been a student karateka himself.
“In 1994 most of the dojo owners resigned from Funakoshi karate and joined Shihan Claude Johnson in the newly established Shorin-Ryu Shorinkan style,” he said.
He said they were in the process of planning a “Tiger reunion” for later in the year.
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