Karate kids, Zacckarie and Isabella

Siblings Zacckarie and Isabella Rampersad have a packed schedule of extra-curricula activities but karate is their favourite.

They practise karate at the Kuro Obi Shotokan Karate Club with sensei Tamara Joseph Novoa at the St Augustine South Community Centre, Freeman Road, St Augustine.

Zacckarie is ten years old and a standard four student at the University School, St Augustine. His favourite subject is maths. He has been a karate kid since he was five. He is ranked as a first brown, which is the level just before the black belt. He practises Shotokan karate.

Zacckarie said the grading of skills is peculiar in karate.

"In karate, it goes backwards: first is third-brown, second is second and third is first-brown."

He has already passed ten belts: white, yellow-stripe, yellow, orange, green, blue, purple, third-brown, second-brown and first-brown.

Zacckarie said he is a good fighter and has used the skills he learnt.

"So once in my physical education class, somebody went up to me and said 'I remember you're a brown belt so fight me.'"

"They accidentally threw a real punch they weren't supposed to and I had to block.

"I was like, 'did you really mean to punch me or was that a mistake.'"

Since Zacckarie was five he has been at the dojo with sensei Novoa. He started karate when she was instructing at his school.

She recently started back at University School and "I am like her little assistant."

He said the hardest part of learning karate is learning how to spar.

"Sensei puts us up against higher ranks and that's always a bit nervous and hard. Well, it's always good to fight someone in a higher rank than you, but the first time I ever did, it was pretty hard and I was very nervous."

He hopes, one day, to be a level six black belt like his sensei.

Zacckarie said he has no idea what he wants to do when he grows up. "I am still thinking about everything. There is so much to do."

Besides karate, Zacckarie has been playing steelpan for seven years; piano for five years; tennis for four years; swimming for seven years and he started guitar lessons this year. He also attends extra lessons for creative writing.

A polymath, Zacckarie's advice to anyone ambitious enough to do karate is "listen to sensei, listen to everything she does and you need to be focused at all times."

Of all his hobbies karate is his favourite.

"It helps me be active. I like it for self-defence and doing it with other people is fun, because in most of my other classes the people aren't very interactive, but in this class they're all active and they want to do stuff.

"You actually get to be in groups with other people, you get to compete against each other, sensei plays games where, whichever team does the best kata, wins."

A kata is an ancient form of karate and there is one for each belt, he explained, but once "it's a brown or black belt, there's multiple katas for each."

Whereas Zacckarie is a brown belt, his sister Isabella, eight, is a green belt. She also attends University School. She is in standard three.

Isabella said karate is very fun but her favourite part was participating in tournaments.

"I've only really been to like one, but it's like competing against strangers. You don't do it against your classmates, you do it against different dojos and you earn medals and stuff."

Zacckarie and Isabella both won medals in the only tournament in which they competed.

Zacckarie said, "I don't really like competition in many stuff but karate I really like."

Isabella said, "Karate is like the best competition and next to that is swimming."

She said she has been swimming since she was two, maybe three. Besides karate, Isabella does tennis and swimming, just like her brother.

But she also does gymnastics.

Out of all her activities, her favourite is karate – because of the competition.

When they get graded to improve their belt ranking, Zacckarie said he is very, very nervous. Isabella agreed.

"Even when you stamp too hard, that's a mistake," Isabella said.

"When you don't do too well in your white-belt grading, you get an extra belt called a yellow-stripe, I got that one, so did he, so for me, this is my fourth belt, but he skipped two, so it's his seventh."

Isabella said she never used her karate skills yet, "only to get away from Zacckarie."

The brother and sister do not fight, but practise karate when it is time for grading.

Like her sensei, Isabella hopes to achieve her sixth black belt. When she grows up, she hopes to be an architect. Currently, her favourite subject is art.

Isabella plays instruments as well – the pan and piano. Her favourite song to play on the steelpan is My Favourite Things from the Sound of Music.

Zacckarie said in school, "I am like the pan person and I have to play Jai Lakshmi Ma for their Divali programme." He also knows how to play the national anthem.

Zacckarie said, "I really enjoy doing everything I do. It's just that it takes a lot of time."