This year’s National Championship was held in Perth at a new venue, the Bendat Basketball Stadium; a recently completed state of the art basketball stadium. This proved a resounding success given the modern and functional nature of the venue. Improved organisation and logistics and well as an ability to have all four competition floors operating in sync helped the competition flow extremely well and in fact finished almost an hour and half in advance of the anticipated end time.
The event held an opening ceremony this year and featured an amazing “Welcome to country” by Aboriginal Elder Neville Collard, whom took us all on a lovely journey of the past and what local Noongars who occupied the area did in the space where the stadium now stood. Mr Martin Pritchard MLC, Member for North Metropolitan Region then shared his thoughts on the potential and importance of small sports like Martial Arts in the ecosystem of sports throughout the country.