Life as a university student chopped Warren Grafton's karate career.
But now that his academic studies are behind him and he's found a way to earn a living as a ground water hydrologist, Grafton has become a serious athlete once again.
A year after accepting an offer from Karate BC high-performance chair Richard Mosdell to spend a month working with him and national team coach Kraig Devlin at their new dojo in Victoria, Grafton has taken his martial arts training to a new level.
The 28-year-old Nechako Karate Club member is in a position to challenge for a medal at the Canadian black belt karate championships in Richmond next month.
"I feel very confident this go-round," said Grafton. "Last year I literally stepped in just hoping to have a couple of good fights. This year, especially with my sweep of the open division at provincials, I feel good in the ring now. I made a few rookie mistakes at nationals last year and I've ironed those out, so I feel good now."
Grafton's karate training officially began at age seven at the Nechako club in South Fort George. Specializing in kumite (fighting) rather than kata (patterns), he drew inspiration from his two-years-older brother Taylor, who preceded Warren on the B.C. junior provincial team, and from their father Mark, who competed in karate as a university student in California.
Warren was part of the junior (under-21) provincial team in 2004 and 2005, finishing as high as fifth nationally in 2004. He achieved his first black belt in May 2007 and served as B.C. team coach but his university studies left him little time to train. He was forced to drop out of the competitive scene until after he finished his postgraduate studies at UVic in 2010.
The month he spent with Mosdell and Devlin at their Kenzen Sport Karate school in Victoria led to Grafton's first appearance at the senior black belt nationals last January in Richmond and he ended up finishing fourth. He lost his lead in the bronze-medal match with six seconds remaining in the bout.
"When I started training again it took me a good five years to get back to the national level and everybody got really good while I was gone," said Grafton. "I wasn't planning on winning anything, I just wanted to prove I could get back to that level. I definitely had unfinished business from before when I had to stop for university and the plan was just to get back to an elite level, but then the realization hit that I could actually win something and that's where I'm at now.
"When I was 17, people took it pretty seriously still but it was an after-school hobby," he said. "Now as an adult I'm fighting professionals who have sport conditioning specialists. They train every day, multiple times a day and that's been an adjustment. You don't have a coach telling you, 'Do this.' If you're not training you're hating yourself for not training and that's the only way you'll have any success at this level."
Richmond is once again hosting the senior national black belt championships, Jan. 29 to Feb. 1, and Grafton plans to be there. He won all his matches in the men's open division at the provincial championships in April to qualify and was also the bronze medalist in the under-84 kilogram weight class. He was denied a shot at gold in the -84kg division when he lost his first match, repeating a pattern of first-round losses which has plagued him throughout his competitive career. But he thinks he's finally put that issue behind him.
Despite a busy work schedule which requires him to travel all over the province frequently, he finds time to train twice a day. He lifts weights at the Northern Sport Centre and tries to get to the Nechako club on Village Avenue to work with his senior students three or four times a week. He also attends regular training sessions with Mosdell, who was in Prince George this past weekend for a two-day training seminar.
Grafton got to know Mosdell 10 years ago when he was part of the B.C. team.
"Richard has done pretty much everything for me," said Grafton. "I was just going to come to their school for a weekend and they said come for a month. They arranged for some families to take me in to stay there and I trained three times a day there and that's why I did as well as I did at nationals."
Karate will likely be included as one of the Olympic sports at the 2020 Summer Games in Tokyo. Grafton has potential to be part of the senior national team but at 28 he says the odds are not in his favour he'll still be on top of his game for another five years.
"The long-term athlete development plan is generally that you require three years of competition at a level before you start to see success, and I am getting older," said Grafton. "These high-level guys that are 20 or 22 will be in their prime by the time the Olympics come around and I'm not a professional karate athlete. I have a real job (designing water wells for First Nations communities for the Prince George branch of Western Water Associates), so to keep this up until 2020, I foresee that being difficult."
Nechako club instructor Keith Nakashima has been nominated for a PacificSport of Northern B.C. difference-maker award for his volunteer contributions to developing athletes in karate. The awards will be handed out at the Fan the Flames banquet and gala, Feb. 11 at the Civic Centre. Former Olympic and world champion long track speed skater Catriona Le May Doan will be the guest speaker.
