Happy new year to everyone; 2017 starts with its first lesson today, 3 January, keeping our regular schedule of 4 lessons per week for the next 51 weeks.

We are already planning our usual Town vs. Gown fight in February where members of all clubs we are training (CARISMA, CUKBS and ARUKBC) will fight members of the other clubs.  This is a great opportunity for all beginners to have a go at sport fighting in a friendly and controlled environment, before trying other tournaments.  Later in the year several members of the club will take part in various regional fights, both light and full contact.  CUKBS will be fighting Varsity in Oxford this year and their training regime has been under tight control since the beginning of Michaelmas term in October.

As usual we will be having 4 grading sessions in March, June, September and December.  On the second Saturday of June we’ll have the annual CARISMA BBQ and on the first Sunday in December, after grading, we’ll have the Christmas dinner.  These events are already on the club’s calendar for your perusal.

As our aim is keeping a critical mass of at least 60 paying members at any given time we will be recruiting beginners any time we need more members but pausing when membership is in line with our expectations.  Our first beginners’ course for the year will start on 19 January and, as usual listed on our calendar.

2016 was another good year for CARISMA, with a large number of new interesting people who joined us, and classes consistently larger than previous years.  We found ourselves with a reduced percentage of undergrads students, from both University of Cambridge and Anglia Ruskin; good news is that we replaced them with high school and post grad students as well as young professionals both male and female.  This change has increased the retention of our members and the consistency of their attendance as undergrads students are around for about 6 months per year and their attendance tends to be not as regular as we would like.

An individual achievement which is definitively worth mentioning is Meitar Blumenfeld as our first winner for a full contact fight; it has to be said that our whole full contact team to date had a total of 4 people, over a long period of time.

For a number of personal reasons we lost, within a short time, 3 of our instructors; fortunately we were working, in the meantime, to train some of our most promising senior students to be their replacement so it all happened smoothly and according to plans.

Whether you are a regular member or a casual reader interested in joining us we hope to see you soon and looking forward to train with you during 2017.