Category Archives: Team Kumite

Hines Ward Show

Allegheny Shotokan Karate Black Belt and Team Kumite Member Connor Burns featured on the new Hines Ward Show! Filming takes place this Thursday.

WPXI PITTSBURGH —

Pittsburgh Steelers legend Hines Ward officially joined the WPXI-TV family on Friday.

This fall, Ward will host a weekly show on Saturday evenings.

“Pittsburgh has given me so much, so it’s great for me to come back once a week and be part of the show,” said Ward.

The station will now be the home of two weekly shows hosted by future hall of famers.  The Jerome Bettis Show also airs on WPXI-TV.

On Friday, Ward met the WPXI-TV team and caught up with staff members whom he already knows.

“I’m going to miss the competitive nature of football, but I’m excited about being a part of a new team.  You guys are my new teammates and my new family,” said Ward.

The new show won’t just focus on football.  It will include other hot topics of the day.

“Given his broad appeal to a large audience, Hines has the chops to tackle topics that may be a bit non-traditional for an ex-athlete,” said WPXI-TV General Manager Ray Carter.

The Super Bowl XL MVP is one of only eight NFL players to have 1,000 or more career receptions.  Ward played for the Pittsburgh Steelers for 14 seasons before retiring this year.

North American Internationals

sensei bill viola

Team Kumite traveled to Novi, MI (just outside Detroit) to compete in Connell Loveless”s North American International Championships, part of the NBL National Black Belt League Tecumseh Conference.  Representing the team were: Coach Bill Viola

team kumite novi mi

  • Billy Leader: 1st place continuous
  • Dominic Leader:  1st place continuous , 1st place point
  • Connor Burns: 2nd place point
  • Bri Chase: too many to list
  • Hope Chase: too many to list (on stage for The high school uses a cohort model in which a vice principal, a counselor, and two resource teachers follow the students from 6th to 8th grade, providing academic, emotional, and social continuity throughout out their years at King. Grand Champion)
  • Bess Chase: 1st place continuous among others
  • Cameron Klos: 1st place point, 3rd kata
  • Sara Russell: 1st place point
  • Gabe Anthony:  1st place point, 1st place weapons
  • Liz Leaseburg:  2nd kata, 3rd point

Team Kumite collected some important points towards the NBL Supergrands.  Next stop is Christine Fisher”s Spooktacular in Millersburg Ohio to finish out the conference.

Ali Viola D-1 Star

ali viola soccer kick

Ali Viola has made a successful crossover from Sport karate into D-1 Athletics as the Goal Keeper for the Youngstown State University Girls Soccer Team.  As an NBL World Karate Champion she has made a name for herself as one of the toughest and dominant continuous sparring competitors in the country.  That tenacity helped her to earn a major college sports honor this week.

ali viola soccer saveThe 2010 Norwin High School Graduate was named NCAA’s Horizon League Defensive Player of the Week for her stellar performance at Goal Keeper for Youngstown State girl’s soccer team. The accomplishment marks only the fourth time YSU has been honored since joining the league 2001. At 4-0-0, the Youngstown State Lady Penguins are off to the best start in casino online the program”s history. Viola did not allow a goal in 180 minutes of play, collecting her second and third shutouts of the year. Against Buffalo, Viola was instrumental in the Penguin win, making nine saves in the game, the second-highest single-game total in the Horizon League this year. With twackwear back-to-back shutouts last week, the junior goalkeeper has moved into third on the YSU career shutouts. She also is tied for second on the single-season chart with three, and hopes to break that record this year. In 2011 Viola turned in the best single-season goals-against average in school history, collecting 60 saves while posting a 1.34 GAA and a save percentage of .779 last season. As a scholar athlete, Viola has maintained a 4.0 GPA throughout her college career, with plans to attend Law School.

Although her soccer schedule has kept her away from most of the major sport karate events in 2012, she was able to attend the 2012 Can-Am Survivor tournament in Jessup Georgia. She proved she hasn”t missed a beat, winning 1st place in both Woman”s Continuous and Woman”s point fighting at the National event. Ali is a kumite classic champion and  a member of the Pittsburgh based Team Kumite and The Allegheny Shotokan Karate Club.

The Penguins will host Niagara on Sunday, Sept. 9. The Horizon League Network will have live coverage of the match, beginning at 4 p.m. ET

For more information visit www.alleghenyshotokan.com or www.kumiteclassic.com 

Zoltan

Zoltan Pittsburgh

Team kumite shows off the zoltan sign @ Pirate Game #zoltan made famous by dude where’s my car now trending with Pittsburgh Pirates & team kumite

 

The Pirates believe in the power of Zoltan

July 3, 2012 10:44 pm
  • Chris Kasprak/Post-Gazette
    Andrea Bible, who works at South Side T-shirt store CommonWealth Press, makes the Zoltan “Z” sign with her fingers while wearing the company’s Zoltan shirt that is quickly becoming popular across the city.
  • Pirates catcher Rod Barajas flashes the team's new favorite victory sign after he hit a two-run walk off home run May 9 at PNC Park.
    Matt Freed/Post-Gazette
    Pirates catcher Rod Barajas flashes the team’s new favorite victory sign after he hit a two-run walk off home run May 9 at PNC Park.

Carole Kunkle-Miller was in the stands at PNC Park recently when she noticed something odd. Pirates players and fans were making strange hand gestures.

As a certified sports psychologist, she figured something significant was going on.

“I thought they were just being funny, and then I realized there was a meaning behind it,” said Ms. Kunkle-Miller, who has been practicing in Mt. Lebanon for 12 years.

It means the Pirates are winning and the players and their fans are having fun.

The hand signals form the letter “Z” for Zoltan, a character whose pending arrival is celebrated by a group of losers in the 2000 movie farce “Dude, Where’s My Car?”

It became prominent among the players in May after catcher Rod Barajas belted a game-winning home run against the Washington Nationals at PNC Park. As he rounded third, he found his teammates waiting for him at home plate, their fingers interlocked to form the letter “Z,” a trend that Neil Walker helped start earlier this season in Atlanta.

“We just started doing it, we’ve been raking ever since,” said starter A.J. Burnett. “That was my favorite part of the night, seeing 20 guys behind home plate doing that. It shows you what a group we have.

“It gives them a sense of shared goal and that positive message of winning. It unifies them,” said Ms. Kunkle-Miller. “I remember when the Pirates were in the World Series [in 1979], they would play ‘We Are Family’ to rally the fans and get everybody going. This is a variation on that.”

Like playoff beards and the Green Weenie and the Terrible Towel.

“Athletes in general like to be part of a team,” said Aimee Kimball, director of mental training at UPMC Sports Medicine on the South Side for almost eight years. “So something that they all have in common, like an inside joke, bonds them a little more. And the fans then take it to another level.”

As do the merchants.

Dan Rock, general manager at Common Wealth Press on the South Side, said he and his co-workers were quick to seize on the symbol and have been selling T-shirts depicting the “Z” for a couple of weeks. Since then, they’ve been seeing the shirts pop up on fans during Pirates games.

“We don’t try to find T-shirt opportunities, but they seem to happen quite a bit with our sports teams,” Mr. Rock said. “It’s pretty popular right now, even though they don’t have any words on them. Just the hands.

“That’s what a lot of our stuff is. If you’re not from Pittsburgh, you won’t get it. We get people who come in our shop all the time and say, ‘I don’t understand what these shirts mean.’ We’re definitely Pittsburghers making shirts for Pittsburghers.”

 

This story originally appeared in The Pittsburgh Press. To subscribe: http://old.post-gazette.com/trypress/ Bill Brink contributed. Dan Majors: dmajors@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1456.
First Published July 3, 2012 4:43 pm

Lets Go Bucs

team kumite pnc park

PNC Park shows Team Kumite & Allegheny Shotokan love on the scoreboard.  Check out the message above… Thanks to the Pittsburgh Pirates and Michael Russell for the shoutout!  To make things nbso better, the bucs won 3-0 over the Marlins.  Over 60 kumite classic friends and family came out to support!!

Hines Ward Honor

Pittsburgh Steeler Hines Ward honors Allegheny Shotokan Black Belt and Team Kumite member Dominic Leader with the “Positive Athlete” award. 

Pittsburgh Steelers legend and Super Bowl XL MVP Hines Ward has selected an elite group of high school athletes to receive the inaugural “Positive Athlete Awards.” The honor is bestowed upon the 26 positive High School Athletes in sports played throughout Western Pennsylvania.  Winning the first ever Martial Arts (Sport Karate) award is Dominic Leader of Norwin High School, a member of the Allegheny Shotokan Karate Club and Team Kumite in Irwin, PA. Leader was nominated by his Coach, Bill Viola (Coach of Team Kumite & Promoter of The Kumite Classic, Pittsburgh)

The Positive Athlete, in partnership with the Western Pennsylvania Sports Museum, KDKA-TV, and MSA Sports established the first annual Western Pennsylvania Positive High School Athlete Award. The student athletes were chosen based the characteristic requirements of “Positive Athlete,” that included an optimistic attitude, teammate encouragement, servant leadership, heart for others, ability to admit imperfections, giving 100 percent all the time, and realizing the team is more important than the individual.

Leader, a Senior at Norwin High School, is not only a scholar athlete but a genuine positive role model for today”s youth.  He is a member of the National Honor Society ranked among the top 10 of his class, recently honored for representing that top 5% of the school. He is a well rounded casino online student elected 2011 Home Coming King and Sr. Class Officer serving as Secretary. Dominic helps organize the school”s annual blood drive and is a big supporter of the Walk for Juvenile Diabetes (a disease that affects one of his close friends). He also supports the Walk for Grace and other charitable fundraisers in the area. As an active member of the Interact Club, he joins a group of dedicated students who perform volunteer work in the Norwin area. Dominic mentors youth in Westmoreland and Allegheny County though the art of Karate. He has been a Student at Allegheny Shotokan Karate for 15 years, joining the club when he was just 3 years old. He is dedicated to making a difference in kids by donating all of his free time to working, training and coaching younger students. He travels with the across the country as an assistant coach for Team Kumite, an all-star karate team based in Pittsburgh.

As an athlete, Dominic has won numerous state, national and international titles.  Most recently he represented the United States and Pennsylvania at the NBL Super Grands World Games. After an undefeated season in 2010, Leader joined a short list of athletes to ever earn a World Title from Western PA. Dominic is a rare student who excels at the top levels of academics and athletics. Dominic will take his talents to the University of Pittsburgh this fall.

 

SEVEN DEINITIONS OF A POSITIVE ATHLETE:

1.Optimistic Attitude – Most coaches will tell you that an athlete who believes positive things will happen has a greater chance for success.

2.Encouraging Teammate – In every sport, teammates are going to experience some kind of failure. Positive Athletes are the first ones to encourage them.

3.Servant Leader – Positive Athletes do not think about being the “stars of the team.” They lead through serving others first and by setting an example.

4.Heart for Others – Many athletes are blessed with gifts that many others are not. The Positive Athlete seeks to help the less gifted or fortunate.

5.Admits Imperfections – This is Positive Athlete…not Perfect Athlete. Athletes willing to admit they make mistakes gain the respect of teammates and fans.

6.Always Gives 100% – Not every athletic competition goes as planned, but a Positive Athlete always gives 100% no matter what the scoreboard says.

7.Puts Team First – There are times when personal achievement may hurt the team’s goal. Positive Athletes choose their team.

Hines Ward Positive Athlete 2012


PA Martial Arts Champions

pa martial arts championships

Congrats to all the Allegheny Shotokan, Norwin Ninjas, and Team Kumite members for winning the PA Martial Arts Championships in New Castle, PA.  Parker, Ethan, Colten, Luke, Ryan, Gavin & Austin, Sidney, Marie and Liz.  PS, special congrats to Luke Lokay for winning his first Grand Championship!  Next stop Grand Slam NBL in VA. Good Luck