Introduction to self
I'm Stephanie! I just graduated from the IB 3 year-athlete program and I used to do karate. I started when I was around 7 years old, then in 2016, I got into the team, continuing my career until 2021 - soon, I’m about to go to university in the UK! I used to participate in Karate at a national level in Hong Kong, training at the sports institute.
What motivated you to compete at an elite level?
When I used to compete my biggest motivation was because I was an athlete and I was very committed to the sport and being an athlete was some sort of career. I saw competitions as checkpoints of achievement but also as a means to stay on the team, I think it was just a way to just checkpoint your athletic career like - okay I’m going to participate in this competition and just to see where I’m at personally - like in terms of personal development.
How are you motivated - intrinsically or extrinsically?
I think when I was growing up it came from outside - my coaches, my parents and especially with competitions. It definitely felt more like It was something my coaches wanted me to do rather than something I wanted to do at the very beginning but in the middle when I was in the cadet category when my results were picking up it was definitely a feeling of “I’m on a roll” and the momentum really pushed me to go more to improve myself and go more for competitions. When I was towards the peak of my career, I was joining larger-scale international competitions, which were worth more points, and there was a great pressure on myself to push myself to do better which would sometimes negatively impact my performance, so it's like good and bad at the same time.
Tell us a bit about some tournaments you participated in, what was your first one like, what was your favourite one, and your top moments?
My first international competition was a really funny story, because I was still young I wasn’t really that good and my coach at the time - she wasn’t really that good. So in order to get my start I had to be in a team, we have something called the team kata, where its 3 people and we do the same routine in a synchronised manner, so I did something else entirely since my main category and the category I did, basically my whole career was individual kata right, but then I got my start as a team of 3 girls and it was a really small international competition the levels weren’t that high, we placed 2nd I think and that's how we got the points, the qualifications to actually enter the HK karate team, but after that I stopped doing teams altogether for individual kata. You asked what the competition I was most proud of? It was definitely the more recent competition/toward the end of my career, the youth national Olympics, it was a BIG deal and I came second for that and with that result I achieved the highest squad level in the sports institute, cause athletes are ranked in grades right and it got me to student-athlete A which is the highest level you can get as a student athlete, that was the proudest I was.
What are some highlights from your tournaments/competitions abroad?
A youth competition I went to 5 years in a row and I competed in every single category because I went to the same place for so many years, the place is in Croatia - the little city is called 'Umag Croatia', it was a little resort and it was just so funny because we just went back every time and it became so familiar to everyone on the team and we know where all the restaurants are, and it's a chill place! Sometimes, we would sneak out to swim in the pool because I wasn't technically allowed, and we just learnt to bring our swimsuits every time it was fun cause it had the best weather and slides and pool and a few days before the competition it didn’t even feel like we were competing, so it just gave me a chance to travel a lot and got me used to long flights, when people say my flight was 7 hours, I’m like 7 hours - that’s so short!
Do you think you received adequate support as a student elite athlete?
Short answer, no. I think the school, although they tell you that they are flexible and you are allowed to do those things, as in train according to your schedule and go to competitions when you have to, you are really expected to catch up on your own. From my point of view, I don’t think I have any complaints since I didn’t find catching up especially hard because I’ve been doing it for so long so I’ve just been used to learning the course material by myself so I think that there are systems in place to allow you to compete and leave school but there isn’t much support within the school that is specially curated for these student-athletes but that's also because there aren’t enough students in my school to allow them to put them to much effort in to create a curated system, so they have to just tell you to catch up themselves, I’m not complaining about this, it's understandable.
As a kid, I was so upset that I was missing out at school and I couldn’t hang out with my friends, just the whole time at school I felt like I was constantly missing out on big moments with my friends, at school and even just the small things that you can be there for. You feel really bad, and as you get older you realize you don’t exactly have to be in the same path as your friends for us to bond, and make lasting and meaningful friendships, it definitely does take a lot of of time to really do school with sport at the same time and try really hard to succeed in both areas, instead of just one significantly better and one just hanging on, just surviving - it took a lot of time. Even at the beginning of secondary school, my schedule was already "School! Karate!". By the time I was done it was already night, and I still have to do my homework, it was just sleep school karate sleep. I barely had any free time, and as a result of that it was really difficult to have any other hobbies feel like no time, and there was not time to put the effort in, since it was such a significant part in my life.
Do you think there are any flaws in the school or within the system of your sport itself?
I’ll talk a little bit about the support between the sports institute and the school, I think the biggest flaw, per se, is the lack of communication, between sport and school since the athlete program is supposed to be joint between school and institute, but there was always a lack of communication so the school wouldn’t know how I was training and the sports institute wouldn't know or understand what my situation at school was, and it was fully up to me maneuver around the two things and to move things around. I think it would have been a lot better if there was communication between the two and a sort of understanding of how to cater for these type of students, but I do understand and there is another school in HK with a lot of student-athletes, and it is my understanding the system is much better there, where their education or the speed of learning is much more suitable for someone who has to put so much time into my sport because my case is a bit special where there weren’t a lot of student-athletes at our school, so it was a lot more difficult to make a better suited timetable or learning situation for me.
Speaking of busy schedules, what does a typical day for an elite athlete look like?
A generic day when was a full time athlete training with adults would be: I wake up, go to school, end school, I would grab food, then I would go train until 6 pm, then I would eat again, train again, then go back to the room at sports institute, then work on school stuff then I would sleep at 1 am then repeat, that was one of the more typical busy days,
Would you say that such a continuous stressful schedule gave you mental health struggles/ would you say there were adequate mental health options for you given within your institute?
I would not say that it was the schedule that perhaps gave me some mental troubles, it was the definitely the pressure or just the tension created because of my sports with my parents, because they wanted to push me in my sport and I wanted to focus more on school, and there would always be tension just regarding the difference in opinion regarding the sport, and my training situation would always cause problems with my family not that they weren’t supportive it was just we had really different points of view on how to tackle or how to approach my career that it really upset me more often than I wanted to, that always kind of made me upset but I wouldn't say that my sport gave me any sort of troubles, I think generally my mental health is relatively healthy.
Was there ever a moment where you felt like giving it up?
Oh plenty! There were plenty of moments, but it just takes strength and endurance to push through every time, because training gets hard and karate has no objective way measure it, its all on you and the people observing you, your coaches, its really easy to feel like you aren’t improving at all since everyday you repeat the same things and try to polish off really small movements, so it's hard to see any significant difference and sometimes it feels like you aren’t improving at all, and you aren’t going anywhere or when you’ve reached a bottleneck in your career where you feel like you aren’t getting anywhere and you aren’t placing in competitions, it's mentally taxing to tough it out and continue your sport sometimes
Is there anything that makes karate special when you compare it to other martial arts or other sports, what was it that got you into karate, what made you go “this is it”
Frankly, I've never tried any other martial arts, I suppose I tried karate and thought “this seems fun” because my first karate lesson was actually unplanned, I was supposed to have a playdate with my moms friends son and he had a karate lesson and I didn’t want to not hang out, so our parents arranged it and I went to the karate lesson and stayed there just never left, so I would say it was coincidence. There was also a point when I did Ice Skating and karate and I picked karate over ice skating - sometimes I imagine what It would've been like if I stuck with Ice Skating.
What was your coach like/ what was your community/team like, was there anything you felt like you missed or didn’t have that you should have?
I think, there was a period of time where just the team was great and I wasn’t having problems with my family and the team and my friends just made me really happy and it felt like a community and I had fun in trainings and it wasn’t competition season so it was fun, we played games there and it was just a great time, and I liked going to training, and my coach -she's been following me since I was a kid, she followed me through different dojos and she has her own dojo now! I help in her dojo and our relationship developed more from pure coach student relationship to, I would just say we’re friends now, we hang out and watch movies together and I think it's a special relationship that I just really cherish.
Speaking of which, you are involved in some coaching/instructing now, what do you particularly enjoy about this aspect?
I love teaching kids, they’re adorable, I love teaching them and bestowing my wisdom on them, I love yelling at them for them to be quiet because sometimes they’re naughty! I just like communicating with them and trying to understand their different little mood swings - it's just fun because you spend so many years as a kid learning karate, and now it's your turn to teach and it's very refreshing, 'cause you see yourself in those kids.
If you could go back in time, what would you go back and tell your younger self?
I would tell my younger self who just got in the sports institute team to just stop thinking too much and worrying that you’re gonna lose all your friends because you aren’t hanging out with them, you’ll find great friends stop worrying that you aren’t good enough, try your best bro, you got this, what's the worst that could happen?
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