A NELSON Mandela Bay pupil has made a name for himself in the karate community by winning gold medals at all the Eastern Cape tournaments he has participated in, and yesterday also obtained his Shodan, or black belt.

Divan Mullany, 17, of Otto du Plessis High School in Algoa Park, is this week’s Weekend Post School Sport Star of the Week.

Divan holds nine karate belt colours which he obtained at the Port Elizabeth North Karate Club at Piet Retief Primary School in Sidwell, where his karate career was kick-started.

This week he was graded for the last belt at the Michael Kliment Institute of Karate in Westering where he has been a member since last year.

“It has been a great breakthrough for me to obtain all nine belts which run in a sequence of white, yellow, orange, green, blue, purple, red, third brown and now the black belt, which is referred to as the Shodan – the last belt in karate.”

The Grade 11 pupil started karate back in Grade 1, while attending Diaz Primary School in Algoa Park.

Over the years he has taken part in his fair share of international and provincial tournaments.

His first international competition was the Tan American World Open in 2004, where he came third in Kumite Shotakan fighting.

The event was held in Argentina.

His second international competition was the Intercontinental Open Championships in Pretoria in 2007, while his third was in July this year, when he went to Durban for the World Japanese Kumite Association World Championships.

He came first in his age group at this event.

This year’s local tournaments, where he won top honours in Shotakan fighting, included eight events, among them the Fish River Sun Tournament in Port Alfred in August, the Dispatch Tournament in March, and the Shorin ryu Tournament at Maryvale school in Port Elizabeth in April.

He also took gold medals at the Algoa Karate Tournament in March and at the Uitenhage tournament in January.

Next Saturday he will again be taking part in a tournament at Maryvale, and later in the month he will show off his skills at the Nelson Mandela All Styles Karate Championships (November 21).

The sport runs in Divan’s family as his mother, Agnesia, is also a karate fanatic, having entered a number of competitions, including the South African Shotakan Karate academy in 2003, where she came second. In 2005, she also won two silver medals at the same competition, besides participating in the Michael Kliment World Championships in 1996 in the same fighting style.

Her equally dedicated offspring specialises mainly in Shotakan fighting style and his future plans include opening his own karate club.

“Next year I’ll be in matric and then I’d like to slow down on karate and concentrate more on my studies,” said Divan, whose motto in life is “never look back”.

He said he had committed to the sport because he loved it and wanted to keep fit.