Alexandria Kickboxing Academy’s Stewart Smillie told of his pride – as four fighters from the Leven Street club qualified for the World Championships.
Stewart, James Young and Lochlan Peddie-Temple will join nine-year-old John Sutherland in travelling to Ireland for the showcase in November after winning WKA Scottish titles earlier this month.
And for Stewart, who took over as lead coach three years ago, seeing young fighters from the club flourish is an incredible feeling.
He said: “The guys who placed first have now qualified to compete as part of Team Scotland, and will compete over in Ireland in November.
“The club as a whole is doing really well. We had 12 medals in the top three and the school managed to make the top four clubs in the whole tournament.
“The club’s as busy as it’s ever been. We’re absolutely mobbed because of the reputation that we’ve started to build.
“The kids are doing really well, they’re enjoying it and their parents are obviously telling everyone how much the kids are loving the classes.
“I’m absolutely delighted with everything that’s happening.
“I’d not long left the student role for the coach role. To take a step off the mats and deliver what I used to learn is an incredible feeling. I love it. I think I now get more enjoyment out of watching the kids fighting and winning than I did when I was actually competing in and winning tournaments myself.”
Stewart continued by explaining that being back at a major competition for the first time since lockdown measures were introduced in 2020 was a big boost to fighters from the academy.
He said: “Tournaments were my favourite part of my career when I was younger.
“Not being able to do that for ages was really difficult, it was hard to keep the kids motivated.
“Being able to go to tournaments gives you big goals.
“It gives you targets to set yourself. When we didn’t have that it could be really difficult.
“But all the kids have worked really, really hard and pushed their way through it.
“The hard work is paying off now.”
And he added that they were now looking for generous local businesses to help ensure the fighters could get to Ireland.
Stewart explained: “Training for the World Championships starts now.
“Once everyone is back then we’ll be hitting things hard and getting set up for training.
“We’ll also need to do loads of fundraising. It’ll cost money to get us over to Ireland, so we’ll be looking to see if some small business would like to get involved in helping us out.”
