A Belfast schoolgirl has been crowned the all-Ireland female free fighting karate champion.

12-year-old Alexandria Crowe, who attends Victoria College. won a gold medal in the girls 12 to 13 age group at the recent Official National Amateur Karate Association of Ireland (ONAKAI) U14 championships in Dublin.

Over 150 of the best young karate athletes from across the 32 counties gathered at Tallaght Leisure Centre in the shadow of the Dublin/Wicklow Mountains to vie for one of the coveted championship titles.

Alexandria fought her way to the finals displaying great fighting spirit as she drew on her repertoire of winning techniques.

In the final bout, Alexandria came up against Chelsea Velleyen from Dublin, the Belfast girl dominated the match winning by an impressive seven points to one.

Her young teammate, nine-year-old Lola Gonzalez McCann from Armagh also won a championship title in the girls 8-9 years category.

Lola, who is a pupil of Roan St Patrick’s Primary School in Eglish, had a tough journey through the preliminary bouts with a very close score of 5-4 in the semi-finals.

However, she pulled out all the stops in the final bout winning comfortably by eight points to nil when she came up against her Dublin opponent Jessica Kilcoyne.
Elsewhere in the tournament, 12-year-old Cole Orr and eight-year-old Fionn Rye, both from Belfast, won bronze medals.

The medallists were part of a 13-strong team coached by former international fighter and World Karate Federation coach James Brunton. He is delighted with the youngsters performance, believing that with an extra push more of his young athletes will be on the medal rostrum next year.

“We have a very strong group of children coming up with undoubtedly a few future champions amongst them,” he said.

“They train together in a disciplined environment and are focused on producing smarter sparring techniques which will ultimately score against a range of opponents.”

Anyone of any age can find out more about learning karate with James by calling him on 07513 837557 or visiting www.irishkarate.com.