There’s a family photograph of Connor Campbell, sitting on the floor as a four-year-old. He faces away from the camera, and watches on as a karate class is being held across the hall.
“I loved it as soon as I walked into the building,” said Campbell, 16, who grew up in Aurora.
He soon donned his own white uniform, or gi, starting as a “tiny tiger” aged five at Brad Jones Karate-Do in Newmarket, where he still trains to this day.
“The discipline was probably the biggest thing,” said Campbell on what drew him to the martial art. “I prefer solo sports, just because you're more dependent on yourself. You can't rely on others when you're alone in a ring with a guy. It's more pressure on yourself, but it's more responsibility, but it also means you've got more freedom, you can do more things and you've got to be more disciplined and focus on yourself.”
The sport sees two fighters aim to score the most points. Points are awarded for strikes to either the body or the head, with fighters able to punch, kick, or sweep the leg.
Campbell’s mother Susan Bantin said she still gets nervous watching her son step into the ring, but said it is a “a good nervous.”
“I went through a period of being quite stressed about him getting injured,” said Bantin. “But actually now that he's older, even though the fights are more aggressive, Connor and his colleagues are in much more control. So I'm actually less stressed now than I was for a few years in the middle.”
Campbell was eight when he started competing, and from there he has gone to win numerous provincial and national championships. In recognition of his success, he was picked as a future hall-of-famer by the Aurora Sports Hall of Fame.
That led him to compete at the JKA World Championships this past October in Japan, which saw more than 1,000 competitors from around the world. While Campbell had success at the Canadian national level, he lost his first bout at the JKA World Championships.
“I felt like I was going there for the experience rather than shooting for hardware, because I knew it was a pretty big long shot anyway,” he said.
Undeterred, Campbell is eyeing a return to the world championships in three years, when it will be held again in Japan. By then he will be 19, and hopes to have attained the second tier of his black belt — he already has the first tier but has to wait till he's 18 to try for the next level.
“There's a saying that when you get your first black belt, that's when the learning begins,” said Bantin. “It opens all these doors for you, in terms of what you're learning in the dojo, who your mentors are and who you train with and everything.”
A form of karate was an exhibition sport at the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, potentially paving the way for its inclusion in the games in the future. But Campbell remains focused on returning to Japan in three years for the next world championships.
