Age: 17
Place of birth: Glengormley
Where you live: Glengormley
Club/Association: Zanshin Karate Jutsu
Your Sport: Karate Justu and mixed martial arts
Your earliest sporting memory: My Dad taking me to play football every Saturday at the Waterworks
Your sporting idol: Nick and Nate Diaz
Best piece of advice you could give to a young athlete: Follow your dreams and don’t let anybody tell you you cannot achieve something, train as hard as you can, keep your head screwed on and enjoy playing your sports for as long as you can.
The most important thing for sporting success is: Having the motivation to achieve what you want, train hard every day because there’s a lot of people that want to be where your goal is, so you always have to stay two steps ahead.
I began training Karate Jutsu with my coach Danny Corr two years ago. I quickly found a deep love for the physical aspect of the sport and wanted to become as good as I could be. I began training three times a week but now currently seven days a week, because I coach children’s classes three times a week. This can be groups of up to 40 children per class.
Coaching the kids classes is a big deal to me as I have only be training two years myself and gives me a sense of personal achievement as it is me being looked upon as skilled enough to teach in the dojo. I have also began taking after school karate classes with Danny.
My passion for the sport is next to none, I am in the dojo more than I am in my own home. I’m there from 6-10pm every night of the week.
Recently I competed in a mixed martial arts event “Into the Cage” in England where I had my first-ever cage fight and won in the second round. This is a career I hope to follow and why I train so hard every day.
