The Mac Weekly

Issue date: 4/11/08 Section: Sports

Media Credit: Aaron Brown Students working on their moves during the Karate class on Wednesday

As you go about your daily life, molding yourself into the global citizen that Macalester strives for you to be, other students work behind the scenes to mold themselves into something else: deadly weapons.

There is indeed a strong presence on campus of students training in the martial arts, but the above statement may be an exaggeration. These students may fall short of being undercover ninjas, but for them martial arts training is nothing to laugh about.

"I don't know of many other sports where you can kick someone in the head and have them laugh in response," Keaton White '09 said.

Alright, maybe there is some laughter involved.

Martial arts at Macalester go back to the early 1980s, when Anita Bendickson started a Karate class. Bendickson has instructed the class on and off since then and is currently teaching the class this semester.

Bendickson is a distinguished instructor; she co-operates the Midwest Karate Association of St. Paul, has been a two-time American Amateur Karate Federation National Women's Kumite Champion and has achieved fifth-degree black belt, the highest degree being tenth.

"No-one in the world has tenth, you have to die to get it," Tue Tran '11 said. "They seem to think the only way to attain perfection is to be a spirit."

The majority of students in the class have only recently been introduced to the world of martial arts.

"A lot get into it because they want to get some self defense, and it's interesting, a good workout," Bendickson said. "The martial arts teach a lot about self confidence and concentration. It's not usually explicit, but implicit in the training. You learn it because of what your body does, not because a teacher says it over and over."

This year's class is a little different than previous years, with an unusually high number of people making the commitment to test for the next belt level. Last semester Tran was the only one to test, but this semester seven people will be testing. Because of the high number of testers, Joel Ertl, Bendickson's co-instructor the Midwest Karate Association of St. Paul, will be coming to campus to administer the test.

Continued...

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