Tulane Karate Club     

 

  What is Karate  | Tulane Karate Club (TKC) | Beginners Classes | Instructors | Tournaments | Photos | All-South Champions | The George Boros Library  | Links | FAQ                         HOME  

Instructors | Officers | Black-Belt Earners

 

Background and Current State of the Tulane Karate Club (TKC)

  Master Takayuki Mikami, 9th Dan JKA and several times All-Japan Champion, founded the Tulane Karate Club in the late 1960's.  Mr. Mikami was one of the very first instructors sent from Japan to the United States, is one of the most senior JKA Master worldwide, and the Chief-Instructor of the Japan Karate Association-American Federation, a JKA national organization of the United States.  He comes to Tulane once a semester to give a belt test and clinic, and TKC members supplement their training at Master Mikami's dojo, the Louisiana Karate Association.  Kyriakos Papadopoulos, 6th Dan JKA, has been the principal instructor of the Tulane Karate Club since 1989.     

 

Club Instructors

   

(with part of the Tulane team in the 2000 ISKF/JKA  Nationals in Philadelphia)

 

 

 
  Kyriakos Papadopoulos  kyriakos@tulane.edu   Dimitri Papadopoulos    dimitripops@gmail.com  
  6th Dan JKA, JKA instructor (B), examiner (C), judge (A)   5th Dan JKA, JKA Instructor (C); examiner (D); judge (C)  
A professor of chemical engineering at Tulane since 1981, Kyriakos started training in karate as a young Tulane professor, by taking a PE class taught by Takayuki Mikami in the Spring Semester of 1982 at Tulane.  He made black-belt in 1988 and started teaching the TKC in 1989.  He took third place in the heavy-weight black-belt kumite of the All-South in 1996 and 1998, years he also competed in the ISKF Nationals.  In addition to teaching the TKC, Kyriakos trains regularly with Master Mikami.  He has also practiced and teaches other martial arts: he is a 4th Dan in Judo (USJF), and has tested successfully under Nariyama Shihan in the Osaka Honbu dojo for his Shodan, Nidan and Sandan in Shodokan Aikido.  He prides himself equally for the accomplishments of his students, as well as for having trained in karate without interruption since he started.  Kyriakos has been an official in two JKA Funakoshi Gichin Shotocups, in Thailand (2011) as a judge and in Tokyo (2014) as an Assistant Coach of the US Team. Dimitri started his karate training at the Tulane Karate Club in 1990 and has trained and taught in that club since.  Six-times national champion for the US JKA organizations, as a member of the US JKA national team since 2000, he has represented the US in Pan American and World tournaments, including the 14th World Shotocup of the JKA (2017).  In the adult black-belt division, he has won the All-South tournament 13 times for kumite and six times for kata.  He is an Assistant Professor at Delgado Community College, where, among other subjects,  he teaches Human Anatomy and Physiology, subjects in which he has a strong interest as a complement to the physical study of karate.  Besides the Tulane Karate Club, he is the instructor of the New Orleans JCC Karate Club, and he also teaches karate at Newman School in New Orleans.

         ALUMNI  PAST  INSTRUCTORS (now training and teaching at NOSA :

  Devin Fadaol   cdf@mcsalaw.com   Sharon Davidson Brown sharondavidsonbrown@gmail.com  
  4th Dan JKA   4th Dan JKA  
  Devin started karate in high-school and came to Tulane as freshman with a brown belt (3rd kyu) in 1993.  He has been junior National Champion (AAU), National Champion of the light-weight division in the 1996 Championships of the USAKF, National Collegiate Champion of the ISKF in 1996, and several-times member of the kumite National Team of the USANKF, as well as of the team of the Southern Region in the ISKF National Championship.  As a member of the ISKF National Team, he won a men's team sparring gold medal in Panama City, Panama, in the 10th PanAmerican Karate Championship on Aug 15, 2004.  He has won the All-South five times and has placed almost every year since the late nineties.  In the ISKF Nationals he got a bronze in kumite (2006), was the Men's Kumite National Campion of JKA-AF on 2008, has placed in the top eight several times and has been member of its US Team several times, including the combined 2006 US JKA team sent to the Shotocup in Sydney, and the 2011 JKA Funakoshi Cup (11th Shotocup) in Bankgok, Thailand.  He was also a US Team member for the recent 13th JKA Shotocup (Tokyo, October, 2014).  In addition to his tournament successes, Devin has contributed to TKC since he was an undergraduate student by serving as club treasurer and president.  After graduating from Tulane College, Devin attended Tulane Law School, has been working as an attorney since 2000 and is a partner in his law firm.   Sharon started karate at Tulane as a sophomore in 1995.  She trained and competed with the Tulane Karate Club till Katrina (2005), being also one of the club's junior instructors.  in 2005, she moved to the North East where she graduated from Temple University's Law School and worked as a lawyer.  Winning individual kumite silver in the Nationals of 2004, she was invited to the combined USA JKA Team trials of Boston and represented the US in the 2006 JKA Shotocup in Australia.  She moved back to New Orleans with her husband and son in 2011, and, has placed in every championship sponsored by JKA AF since then, winning the women's individual kumite and taking the Bronze in the All-South of 2014.  On Feb 1, 2014, she was one of the two top picks for the 13th JKA Shotocup in Tokyo, October 2014. 

 

   

 

 

Officers 

 

 

 

President:   Alex Fisher afisher8@tulane.edu

 

Vice-President:  Evan Carrie  ecarrie@tulane.edu

 

Secrectary:   Alyssa Bartoshevich abartosh@tulane.edu

 

Treasurer:    Vicky Wang wwang8@tulane.edu

 

Black Belts

 

 

List of those who obtained their JKA black belts as members of the Tulane Karate Club 

This list is incomplete and some of the dates are uncertain before 1992, so please e-mail us  with additions and corrections (about you or others) at kyriakos@tulane.edu

( ) in parentheses we show higher Dans obtained after the karateka left Tulane

 

  Dimitri Papadopoulos Shodan 1994 Nidan 1996 Sandan  2001 Yondan 2007 Godan 2012
  Devin Fadaol Shodan 1994 Nidan 1997 Sandan  2000 Yondan 2003
  Sharon Davidson Brown Shodan 1999 Nidan 2001 Sandan  2004 Yondan 2013
  Tracy Hamlin Shodan 1995 Nidan 1998 Sandan  2001
  Natsumi Sugiyama Shodan 2008 Nidan 2011 Sandan  2015
  Harry Rahn Shodan 2014 Nidan 2015 Sandan  2017
  Laura Papadopoulos Shodan 1995 Nidan 1998
  Ian Foley Shodan 1997 Nidan 1999
  Rachel Neil-Stix Shodan 1999 Nidan 2001 (Sandan 10, LKA)
  Dominique Langford Shodan 2000 Nidan 2002
  Madina Papadopoulos Shodan 1998 Nidan 2002
  Edith Pike-Biegunska Shodan 2000 Nidan 2002 (Sandan 04, Japan) (Yondan '11, NY)
  Nancy Lee Shodan 1998 Nidan 2011
  Steven Gasior Shodan 2003 Nidan 2011
  Amanda Johnson Shodan 2003 Nidan 2011
  Charles Clayton Shodan (JCC) Nidan 2015
  Antony Sandoval Shodan 2011 Nidan 2017
  Michael Duplantis Shodan 2013 Nidan 2017
  Andy Escobar Shodan 1981? (Nidan ??) (Sandan ??)
  Jody Bremer Shodan 1982
  Aaron Hoopes                 Shodan 1984 (Nidan, JAPAN 87) (Sandan, JAPAN 95)
  Lou Kuhlman Shodan 1986
  Mike Moss Shodan 1986
  Errol Walcott Shodan 1992
  Clauber Scarparo Shodan 1995
  Ruth Chang Shodan 1995 (Nidan, MICHIGAN. 97)
  Livia Veress Shodan 1995
  Richard Browning Shodan 1996
  John Colladay Shodan 1997
  My-Thanh Kim Shodan 1997
  Dan Zajac Shodan 1997
  Sol Irvine Shodan 1998
  Corey Lambert Shodan 1999
  Jacquelynn Nelson Shodan 2000
  Noah Kaufman Shodan 2000
  Ken Gulotta Shodan 2001
  Alex Hessler Shodan 2002
  Sarah Tetlow Shodan 2002
  Jeff Finn Shodan 2003
  Jason Thomas Shodan 2003
  Federico Lértora Shodan 2004
  Cindy Littleton Hetzer Shodan 2006
  SriRamGopal Naraharisetty Shodan 2008
  Nathan Thomas Shodan 2008
  Sandeep P. Koka Shodan 2008
  Austin Orgah Shodan 2008
  Monica Portal Shodan 2008
  Jennifer Mefford Shodan 2008
  Lorenzo Gonzalez-Fontes Shodan 2009
  Veronica Leandrez Shodan 2009
  Ian Kersting (JCC club) Shodan 2009
  Pedram Amini Shodan 2010
  Nathan Goggans Shodan 2010
  Chris Li Shodan 2010
  Josh Burns Shodan 2010 Nidan (not JKA)

  Peixi Zhu Shodan 2011
  Eric Rawls Shodan 2013
  Yoni Kaplan Shodan 2016
  Sicheng Jiang Shodan 2016
  Weiyao "Vicky" Wang Shodan 2017