Letters from our Community
Dear John,
Thank you for allowing me to officiate at the FMA dojo tournament. In my twenty plus years of attending several martial arts schools this was my first experience as a competition referee. I found the day to be both enlightening and fun. You may not be aware but over the years I have spent quite a bit of time mentoring youths. It has been a natural offshoot of raising my own boys but equally as natural it has involved investing many, many hours in other peoples' kids in a myriad of programs. I have long been aware of the physical and mental benefits of martial arts. During my years of attending FMA I have developed a deep appreciation of the quality of the program that you and Elisa offer. Today I learned some new aspects of the program. I arrived in the middle of the little dragons’ tournament and the first thing I noticed were the senior youth students performing officiating and record keeping roles for the younger kids. Later in the day when the teams were assigned for the older kids’ competition the senior youth students were tasked with organizing and naming their teams as well as competing in their own bouts. I find this all very impressive. They handled the tasks with confidence and aplomb. These were true leadership experiences and all too few youth programs offer such valuable experiences. When youths are allowed and encouraged to take on leadership roles the programming takes on additional degrees of difficulty to execute and require much more patience from the adult staff yet the benefits to the participants are priceless. Well done!
David E. Oulvey, CPA
Chief Financial Officer
SMW Trading Company, Inc.
1st Kyu Kyokushin Karate
1st Dan Tae Kwon Do and Hapkido
2nd Dan Shotokan Karate
