KOCHI: For the students of the New Indian Sports Academy in the capital city, it’s a sweet victory. After having earned the overall title continuously for the past two years, the sports academy has done it again. It has won the National All-India Karate Championship held recently at Bengaluru, also bagging the all-India cup on the occasion.
Forty-nine students coming from different schools in the city took part in the tournament, representing the academy, all of them bagging prizes for their individual events. For Karate coach Noushad A, winning the overall and all-India cup has been a dream come true. He says, “Karnataka had won the first and second overall trophies in the tournament. This time our sports academy earned the cup, as we had bagged the overall trophy three times, followed by Karnataka in the second place.”
Developing a love for the sport from a young age, Noushad had been teaching Karate to the students for the past 28 years. Learning Kalari at ten years,he soon got aquainted with the martial art, feeling in awe of its self-defense techniques. It was this interest that led the martial arts enthusiast to start the sports academy.
If you felt that the passion for Karate was something limited just to him, you are wrong. While Noushad is a seventh-degree blackbelt holder in the martial art earning the title of Kyo-shi, his wife Shajina too is an ardent Karate enthusiast. Teaching the art to students for the past ten years, Shajina, along with her husband and their students had been travelling across the country as part of national-level karate championships.
For the couple passionate about Karate, the enthusiasm for the same is so intense that Shajina is now aiming to get a place in the Guinness Book of World Records. Noushad says, “Though she had already got the title of sixth degree blackbelt holder, she had not reached the age criteria. Currently there are no woman who holds the title. This time, we plan to apply for it.”
The sports school earned 117 trophies in the recent tournament. Noushad is the chairman while his wife is the principal of the sports academy which currently teaches only Karate to students. The Karate school has around 300 students while the couple teaching over 1000 students going to their respective schools. Recently Noushad had bagged the opportunity to coach students at the Greenfield stadium at Karyavattom.