The Shotokan Karate Club at the University of Washington is focused on teaching Shotokan Karate and fostering an understanding of budo amongst its members. We meet on Tuesday and Thursday evenings throughout the entire year. The Shotokan Karate Club and Shotokan Karate Sports and Fitness Classes at the UW are two, interlinked groups.

Shotokan Karate at the UW is a member of Shotokan Karate of America (SKA). We are a national nonprofit karate organization, and the oldest karate organization in the US. This dojo, and the organization as a whole, emphasizes a traditional approach to karate-do with focus on effective techniques, analysis of situations and applications, and development of the inner self through hard practice. We do not emphasize "sport karate"or winning in tournaments. Instead, we emphasize realism within the context of karate, which is mostly the subset of martial arts that involves striking blows to your opponent (as opposed to throwing and grappling).

There are two other affiliated dojos in the Seattle area: the North Seattle dojo and the South King County dojo. You must be affiliated with the University of Washington (either as a student, staff, or faculty member) in order to practice at the UW dojo.

Goodwill Tournament Results

Congratulations to the UW team for bringing home the Goodwill Cup after a year's absence in the cold dark lands of Canada. This year marks the 26th anniversary of the Goodwill Tournament, an annual event in the Pacific Northwest featuring a competition between the Shotokan Karate Club at the UW and the UBC Shotokan Karate Club. Other events included an open team competition with teams from the UW, UBC, North Delta, and Burnaby, a kid's team tournament, individual double elimination competitions with rings for white belts, brown belts, black belts as well as an additional ring for women only. This lent many opportunities to fight for everyone in attendance; the organizers report that there were 146 matches by the end of the day.

In addition to retrieving the Cup, UW members brought back individual medals: Helena van Tol (3rd Women's), Joy Benson (1st Women's), Rylan Montgomery (3rd White belt).

The tournament was a superb opportunity to hone skills that we practice regularly and promoted "goodwill", socialization and strong friendships with our neighbors to the north. For our members, it is important to keep in mind that tournaments are merely a means of developing a fighting spirit, which is the real goal of karate. Karateka do not train to win points, but to develop a sense of calm and determined focus while facing any opponent, large, small, fast or slow.