2nd August 2005
Message from Sensei John Gillespie.

Birchwood has its first homegrown Black Belts!

David Creaton and Robert Nutter passed the final part of the Black Belt grading last night under the watchful eyes of Sensei Mike Nursey (7th Dan).

Robby and David have trained continuously for more than 9 years to reach this level. Over these years there have been many ups and downs and I’m sure that there were times when they thought that they would never make it.
But last night they put all doubts behind them when they became Birchwood’s first Black Belts! I would like to congratulate both young men on how much they have improved in the last year. They haven’t found the jump from Kyu grading to Dan grading an easy one (especially not the terminology) but they both knuckled down, sorted out what was wrong and passed in the end….Well done!

A word of warning: Black Belt does not mean that you have mastered Karate it just means that you have learnt enough of the basics to BEGIN mastering Karate!