Karate for keeps at the JCC

Posted

Tryouts this Sunday for competitive team

By Malka Eisenberg

Issue of October 16 2009/ 29 Tishrei 5770

Black Belt Alex Sternberg is coming to the Jewish Community Center of the Greater Five Towns to lead a competitive karate class. And he’s not taking any prisoners.

“We will be training hard on a regular basis; it will be challenging,” Sternberg explained. “We will go to competitions and compete and if we don’t win we will train harder and analyze why we didn’t win. I will produce winners.”

The Jewish Community Center of the Greater Five Towns will begin holding tryouts for its first karate team this Sunday, October 18th. The goal is to field three competitive teams to compete in tri-state matches in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, according to Sheryl Wyszkowski, director of art and leisure at the JCC. Applicants will be divided into three teams: junior ages eight through 12, youth ages 13 through 17 and senior ages 18 and up.

Sternberg began his training at age 12 and has been practicing, teaching and coaching karate for over 40 years. He is the founder and chief instructor of Shotokan Karate USA, a 7th Dan black belt from the USA National Karate-do Federation, and member of the US Olympic Committee. He is also chairman of the Karate Committee for Maccabi USA. From the 1960s through the 1980s he competed nationally and internationally, winning at nearly 90 meets. Sternberg left active competition and continued in karate as a coach for many US National teams in junior and senior World Championships, Pan American Championships and World and Pan-American Maccabiah Games. Sternberg is currently an adjunct associate professor of sports science at Long Island University, and a clinical instructor at the department of Orthopedic Surgery and Rehabilitation Medicine at Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn.

Sternberg approached Wyszkowski about beginning a team before the summer.

“I thought it was a great idea,” said Wyszkowski.

Applicants aren’t required to have prior training, but must pass a physical fitness test. Applicants should be serious about the program, which involves buying personal equipment including two uniforms, and twice weekly training sessions with professional coaches and travel to competitions within the tri-state area, “Apparently many kids in karate schools in the Five Towns don’t compete,” pointed out Sternberg. Children tend to lose patience and quit, Sternberg maintains, when karate is “training for its own sake.” In contrast the JCC team will be a “competitive class.”

Students should come willing to work, said Sternberg. He is looking for “normal, typical children in the community who are not afraid to work hard.” Weight, Sternberg said, is not an issue. A child may have a good athletic potential, he continued, and the course will “give children the challenge to work out in a serious manner” and enter karate competitions “to give confidence and have a level of experience to draw upon.”

“I spent probably 40 years of my life teaching kids various aspects of karate and my interest coincided with business,” Sternberg said. “I owned and operated several karate schools. Now I teach because I enjoy it and because I enjoy what it does for the children. Studies show that physically fit children who engage in sports on a regular basis do better in school. They have a better attention span, better behavior and better school performance. It improves their health and their scholastic and academic performance.”

For more information or for a no-fee tryout appointment, call the JCC at (516) 569-6733 extension 222.