The Karate Kid Breaks a Board

Tonight was a board-breaking session in karate class. This was not something that the kids had ever practiced or done before; however we had seen this at the big karate school demo/promotion a couple of months ago. When Sensei Tony talked about this last week, Mommy asked him if everyone would be able to actually do it and he replied that they'd never had a student not be able to complete the board breaking. Parker was excited all day today talking about how he was going to karate and break boards. Yesterday at church we had invited his babysitter Miss Rael and her mom Leslie to join us and they were able to attend.

There were nine kids in Parker's class tonight and every single one of them was able to break a board with their foot, some of them on the first try! There was a huge crowd of family and friends there to observe and they all cheered like crazy for every student that went up. Parker was shy and nervous once we got to class tonight and didn't want to volunteer so he had to be coaxed up at the end as the last student. All the people there were cheering his name to get him to go up there. Once he got up front he started to get into it a little bit. He tried to break the board off the concrete blocks with his foot, but after three tries, Sensei Tony realized that was a little high for him. So they switched to Parker breaking the board while it balanced on two small stacks of wood. Parker nailed it on the fifth try with those! He was so excited and ran around all night telling anyone who would listen that "I broke a board!!!!!" Every kid got to keep their board and Melissa signed and dated them for each child. We took him to Dairy Queen for a special ice cream treat after class.

Here's proud Parker with his board!

Here's Parker with Sensei Tony and his fiance' Melissa who helps teach. Notice the cast - Sensei Tony broke his right arm just six days before he was to fly out to compete in the World Championships last week in Thailand. Instead he ended up with a plate and 10 screws in his arm and no trip. But he's still smiling!

Below is a a video taken during class last night.
It includes Sensei Tony's introduction and all of Parker's attempts.
The whole thing runs about 3 minutes.