Taylor
Feenstra
Taylor Feenstra
is thirteen years old, and a second-degree black belt.
She started her martial arts life almost four years ago.
She received her first-degree black belt on August 23, 2003 and
her second just recently on August 20, 2005.
She is a 4.0 student at a local private college preparatory
school and has received two student-of-the-month awards in her first
year there.
How it all
started: well, let’s just say there was a $14.99 deal for one month of
karate at a local karate school in Woodbury, Minnesota.
This would make a fine Christmas present.
After that first night, she was hooked.
She didn’t think karate could get any better until she entered
her first tournament…and got first place.
Through good times and bad, at local tournaments, Taylor always
loved to compete. It got
even better from there when just this year she tried out for and got on
a national team, SIDEKICK INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION TEAM.
The summer before this, she attended John Chung’s boot camp.
After getting on the team, she began the NASKA circuit.
As for martial
arts accomplishments, Taylor has received six end-of-year top competitor
awards at the local level as well as wins an Overall Grand Championship,
(or golden chicken as it has come to be known,) in 2005.
In the WSKF, she has won the world title in Korean Traditional
Forms at Slugfest Internationals in New Orleans, 2005.
Also, at Las Vegas Legacy, she won her first nighttime finals
grand championship. Winning
a brand new silver Ipod Mini. As
for the NASKA circuit, which is the main circuit she travels on, she is
currently holding a fourth place seed in girl’s 12-13 traditional
forms. For the 2004-2005
season, she only competed at two tournaments and ended up with three
world awards, (placing one through ten.)
In addition to
competition, she has also taught at her local karate school.
She stopped for a while due to schoolwork, but will soon be
teaching a competition class at the school.
Taylor has been featured on http://www.aweber.com/articles/usak-students
for some of her achievements. Her
name was published in Black-belt Magazine for being a top local
competitor in 2003-2004. She
was recently in the Local Newspaper, (THE WOODBURY BULLETIN,) for
getting her second-degree black belt.
She is also filmed performing one of her forms on the BLUEGRASS
NATIONALS DVD, created by Black and Blue Inc.
Lastly, she has appeared on http://www.maslinc.com
in the tournament write-ups and pictures.
This past
summer, Taylor attended Sharkey’s Karate 30, (but actually 32 day,)
boot camp. At this camp,
she was given the opportunity to get involved with acting at the
Audition Studio in Chicago, Illinois.
Taylor has been in two commercials, and has received a final cut
call back with John Robert Powers Acting School; however, she turned
down the offer. She is
really excited about acting and hopes there will be opportunities for
her to get more involved.
She is looking forward to continuing to compete at the national
level. She hopes to
continue to improve her performances at each outing.
Most important, through this adventure in martial arts, Taylor
has made wonderful friends and cannot wait to see them at the next
event.
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