New Lil’ Dragon Instructor:

We’ve added a new Adult Instructor to the Lil’ Dragon program, Karleen Thibault. Karleen has had years of experience teaching young students and special needs. She has already brought a lot more structure and discipline to the classes creating a much better learning environment.

Student of the Month:

We had several students who did very well in testing and at the Sundre tournament. We’ve decided to award 2 students with the Student of the Month awards. Ilya Kostenko and Lawrence Tang both skipped a belt, and as a result they were both awarded the honor. Their picture will be on the front window of the Martial Arts room at the club.

Halloween Party:

We had a pack house for our Halloween Party with almost 50 children in attendance. Every child walked away with a huge bag of candy and we gave away over 16 prizes for the best costumes! Best Overall Girl was Jordan Nolan and Best Overall Boy was Dustin Wright. Thank you to all the Parents that volunteered to make the event a success. Our next Special Event will be a Movie and Pizza night on December 17^th from 5-8:30pm, 8:30-9pm is the pick-up time. We will send out all the information on November 10^th and then we will start accepting registrations on November 21^st.

Women’s Self-Defense Seminar:

This seminar is Free and available to all female students 12 years of age and up. The seminar focuses a providing girls and women basic and strong self-defense techniques. Here’s the date and time: November 30^th 8-10pm. You need to register with M.T. by November 25^th.

Next Testing Dates:

Remember you need to register and pay for testing 2 days in advance, and we have limited amount of space per test day. Our next Black Belt Test will be December 17^th. Here are the upcoming test dates:

November 16^th 8-9 pm, November 17^th 7-8pm. December 2^nd 5-7pm, December 3^rd 1-4pm, December 20^th 6-8pm, December 21^st 6-8pm.

Tournaments:

We did excellent at our first tournament! At Sundre, our 9 competitors in a total of 11 divisions, won 4 Gold, 4 Silver, and 3 Bronze. In 2 of the event we place 1^st and 2^nd so we took home 6 of the highest medals we could. We also we had 5 students who competed at their 1^st tournament. The next Tournaments are in Edmonton on November 5^thand in Whitecourt on November 19^th.

Bullying:

In 3^rd week of November (starting on November 14^th) we will teach the children more anti-bullying self-defense and talk to them on more ways to avoid being the target of bullying. We will

School Closures and Class Changes:

We will be closed on Remembrance Day, November 11^th.

There will be no Raptor classes on the Tournament days.

There will be no 8pm All-Open class on November 30^th in lieu of the Women’s Self-defense Seminar.

Welcome to the Winter Session, and the unpredictable weather that comes with this time of the year! For SGMA we are very anxious to get back from the Holiday Break. We are gearing up for the Provincials, the Nationals, and our Next Black Belt Test, Seminar and Pot-luck Party. We hope everyone had a great holiday, and now they are ready to continue to improve their Martial Arts.  We have some important events coming up that we need to inform you on.

NEW INSTRUCTORS
SGMA is very proud to add to new Instructors to our program: Jonathan Beny, our youngest 2nd Degree Black Belt and Provincial Champion, will be assisting the Wednesday 6-7 Child Open Class; Jonathan has done this all by the age of 9. Callesta Lazaruk, who is also 9, has been assisting the Lil’ Dragons since September.  Callesta has done a remarkable job considering she used to be a Lil’ Dragon herself.  Luis Agoncillo and Hope Perri have also been added as Assistants bringing our teaching staff to a total of 10; Master Thibault, Adrian Gaska, Barry Laporte, Brad Lazaruk, Brandon Boychuk, Brandon Eyck, Jonathan Beny, Luis Agoncillo, Hope Perri, and Callesta Lazaruk. With so many Black Belts in our School, we will continue to produce new Instructors and new Leaders.  

TESTING
Our Next Color Belt testing will be take place in the last week of February.  Please Note: The Testing will be done DURING Class Times, hence NO Cancellations.  Our next Black Belt Test will be on March 7th.  This is an All Day event, as it will include the Test, a Seminar, and the Pot-luck Party. Our Black Belt Potluck Party will run from 5-8PM at the Fish Creek Sports Club.   More info will be coming next month. Students will be required to have all the necessary stripes to test.  Please refer to the website www.sgma.biz for testing requirements.  Currently, those requirements can be found in the Student Handbook on the Training Materials Page.

RAPTORS
We are again having an excellent tournament season. Our competitors continue to do extremely well winning medals. They have won 96% of the medals they were eligible to win and over 75% of those were Gold! At our most recent Tournament in Airdrie our team won 11 out of a possible 11 medals. 8 Gold, 2 Silver, and 1 Bronze.  We also won 11 of the 13 matches we competed in and took 2 Gold and 1 Silver in the 3 Patterns divisions we were entered in.  Here are the Results:

	Sparring	Patterns
Mason Depatie	Gold	Gold
Jonathan Beny	Gold	Silver
Michael Patterson	Bronze*	Gold
Riley Zuber	Gold	DNC
Blake Prokopetz	Gold	DNC
Barrie Laporte	Gold	DNC
Anton Matiouchine	Gold	DNC
Jordan Prokopetz	Silver	DNC

 We will be attending the D.K. Chun Annual Tournament in Edmonton and the Provincials in Calgary in March. In May we will be competing at Senior Nationals in Vancouver, the Junior Nationals in Quebec City, and the Western Canadian Tournament of Champions in Calgary. We are always looking for new students to join our Raptor’s program.  Training to be a Raptor dramatically increases the student’s techniques, confidence and athleticism. The program is open to all students Yellow Belt and Higher or on Master Thibault’s recommendations. Raptors train to compete in tournaments for Sparring and Patterns.  Raptors please remember the patterns class is going to start again on Saturday January 31st, and will run immediately after the Sparring Class.    Raptor training is available to all Yellow Belts and Higher or on Master Thibault's recommendation.

MOVIE & PIZZA NIGHT!
We are having our first ever Movie & Pizza Night on Friday, February 27th from 5-8:30PM.  This is a fun filled event where we will watch a Movie (Kung-Fu Panda), eat Pizza, and then compete in events for very cool martial arts prizes.  The cost of the event is $15 per child and this includes Pizza  and Juice Boxes (at least 3 of each).  We only have room for  about 25 children, and with over 60 children in the school, spots will fill up fast.  Please register with either Master Thibault, Adrian Gaska, Barry Laporte, or Brad Lazaruk as soon as possible.

SGMA WEBSITE IMPROVEMENTS!
We are continuing to work on improving our website.  We plan on re-doing and improving the training videos very shortly. We plan on adding Black Belt Patterns and Self-defense techniques. We will be including a Black Belt Page that will profile our elite students. WE STILL WANT PHOTOS AND VIDEOS OF OUR STUDENTS DOING ANY KIND OF MARTIAL ARTS TO POST TO THE GALLERY PAGE!

SPARRING GEAR FOR ALL STUDENTS
We require all  YELLOW BELTS & HIGHER to purchase FistForearm ($24) and Shin-In-Step ($24) Pads and all students are required to bring them to every class.  We have a few spares in the club however due to health regulations we are required to clean these pads after every use.  As a result, any student who wishes to borrow our sparring pads will be required to pay $2.50 per set.  Students who forget their pads will have to rent pads or miss out on the class. Payment must be made at the students next class.

CLOSURES & SCHEDULE CHANGES
There are no further Closures in January.
In February we will be closed from 13th - 17th, in Lieu of the Family Day Long-Weekend