Watching the 2016 Summer Olympics was a real treat for 15-year-old Paul R. Wharton High junior Yasmine Gillespie. It provided a nice respite from the young athlete’s busy schedule, as she got to see martial artists from all over the world compete for gold in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
What the second-degree black belt did not know was that during the Olympics, several new sports were given a chance to be included in the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo, and making the cut was karate, both kata (one-person forms) and kumite (two-person grappling/sparring).
The former infused instant dreams into the mind of Yasmine, who over the summer found out she would be representing Team USA at the World Karate & Kickboxing Commission (WKC) World Championships in Dublin, Ireland.
In June, she attended the WKC national tournament in Dearborn, Michigan on the University of Michigan’s Dearborn campus.
“The way it works is they call you up, you do your form, they score you, then you go again and it repeats until you eventually get a compiled score,” Yasmine says. “When they called the top four qualifiers up, I didn’t realize that was what it was for, I thought they just called me up to perform again.”
Instead, one of the other girls leaned over to her and said, “You’re coming with us to Dublin. Welcome to the team.”
“I was so shocked,” Yasmine said. “I got the medals and took pictures and I was thinking, ‘Oh, my God. I’m on Team USA. That’s real.’”
From October 30 through November 4, Gillespie will be representing Team USA at the WKC World Championships, where more than two dozen countries will be participating.
Yasmine says she has always wanted to be an Olympic athlete, and she is headed in that direction.
But before 2020 rolls around, she has other goals. She was advanced a grade level when she started public school, and plans to finish in the top 10 of her graduating class academically. She plays Libero on Wharton’s varsity volleyball team, and also is a varsity tennis player.
How does she manage all of this?
“I’m really good with time management,” Yasmine says. “I find time to work on homework after lunch and in that hour between volleyball practice and karate class. It’s hard to fit it in but I make sure and find time; I plan ahead.”
That careful planning and management has helped Yasmine succeed not only academically, but also in her athletic pursuits.
She trains under fourth-degree karate black belt, Master John Augello at Core Martial Arts in New Tampa. While Yasmine cracks the pads and rolls around on the mat with the other students in the adult class, her specialty is one-person forms, called “katas” in Japanese or Okinawan martial arts disciplines.
A form or kata is a series of movement combinations fused together to simulate combat against an imaginary opponent or opponents. Oftentimes, an intense energy/vocal expression called a “kia” is used to punctuate some of the techniques.
“She just has this natural flow,” Augello says, “and you can’t teach that.”
Yasmine competes in both regular kata and classical kata. She started training in martial arts when she was three years old, and advanced quickly, especially in her teenage years. She now competes in the adult class.
“She was just too big and strong for the little guys,” Augello says. “We had to set the bar higher for her.”
Yasmine keeps jumping over that bar.
In July, she earned her second black belt, and also competed in the U.S. Open Karate World Championships in Orlando and won the International Championship in regular kata in the 15-16 age group.
Her brother Sammy, who is 11, also competes and will join her in Dublin.
“My wife and I wanted to get our kids into karate at an early age,” Yasmine’s father Brian said. “And, not just for self defense but also for confidence and having experience getting out and performing at a young age.”
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