UStA MMA partakes in the Scottish University Kickboxing Championship
Recently, the University of St Andrews MMA club took part in the Scottish University Kickboxing Championships, held by the University of Aberdeen’s Kickboxing club.
This is a tournament held under low-kick kickboxing rules, with weight categories for beginner, intermediate, and advanced fighters. Between five to six Scottish Universities participated. The Saints MMA team consisted of seven players, Caspar Clothier, Roman Hanna, Chadwick Ho, Julia Albersmeier, Janan Choi, AGP and AKP and Oliver James Clarke.
Oliver was former captain of the team and participated in the Angus Kickboxing promotions (under K1 Kickboxing rules) and Angus Grappling promotions (under Brazilian Jim Jitsu rules), which are public tournaments open to everyone.
He recalls: “I started Muay Thai and Kickboxing in 2019 while studying at the University of Edinburgh. I dropped out for personal reasons and began taking kickboxing a lot more seriously. I started a new degree in St. Andrews in 2021, where I joined St. Andrews MMA, which was student run at the time. Since then, I’ve met some immensely talented and passionate martial artists, and we all agreed we wanted more for the club. Over the past two years, we have been hiring qualified coaches and training outside of session time to build experience, which I feel in large part amounted to the success we found this past weekend.”
Everyone that competed did an amazing job, to the credit of current captains, Chadwick Ho and Julia Albersmeier, who have been so encouraging and welcoming to new members and helped turn them into a real team.
Special mention goes to Caspar Clothier, a third year student. Caspar placed second in the intermediate category in 2023 and has spent the last year working hard to place first in the Advanced Division this year.
Saints MMA has a striking fight team and a grappling fight team, both of which are still looking to compete toward the end of the academic year. Our striking team has signed up to compete in the BUCS Muay Thai Championships, taking place on March 9th, and the grappling team is looking to compete in Angus Grappling promotions 6, and/or the ADCC British Open.