In January 2007 Sensei Liam O’Grady decided to go professional in karate and set up after school karate clubs in York and named them the ‘York Shotokan Tigers’. The after school clubs proved very popular and they went from strength to strength culminating around 60 students aged between 6 and 13 years in a matter of months. The York Shotokan Tigers are now are now very popular with over 100 members training each week.

This amount of members enanbled Sensei O’Grady to expand and open his own official Dojo. This was named ‘The Black Dragon Dojo’ and opened its doors on Wednesday 12th September 2007 at the new £60 million York College Sports Centre. Again the club grew and with many of the young York Shotokan Tigers training there many adults came too.

After just a few months Sensei O’Grady was now running the largest Karate club in York, and with Sensei Rob McCartney 4th Dan joining the club in 2008, the club will only got stronger. The clubs grading examiners, Sensei Garry Harford 7th Dan and Sensei Randy Williams 6th Dan, have both said that the club’s members are way above average, so the club not only has quantity, it has proven quality too. In January 2008, the club also opened a black and brown belt kumite (fight) night, which again is growing and is attracting a lot of interest from other karate clubs in and around York who want to train. This session is taught by Sensei’s Liam O’Grady and Rob McCartney. The sessions involve a high intense training session based on competition style kumite (fighting). We are the only KUGB club and possibly the only karate club in York to provide this kind of specialist training and is open to anyone who is a brown or black belt in karate.

After a very successful start to 2007 the future looks very bright for the York Karate Dojo’s. The club already has 3 international squad members and 4 Northern Region squad members. The club has also coached some of its students to National titles already in 2008. There is a happy, confident buzz within the club and I believe there are many future stars here too.

Liam O'Grady

Rob McCartney

Lisa O'Grady

Simon Crowther