Chelsey says she has the distinction of being to nearly every Super Grands held. Now wait a minute, the first SG was November 1990 and she was born in April 1990. I asked her if she remembers being at the first one and she said she wasn’t sure but she thinks so... yeah, right? Truth is she may very well have been there however, since both her father and brother were, but that’s quite a memory if she remembers it.

Chelsey’s been tagging along behind her brother’s sport karate competition since she can recall and she relates that her brother’s participation in karate training was incentive to start herself. She’d tag along to her brother’s karate classes as a four year old and secretly find a vacant corner in the spectating area to emulate all the moves she saw her brother do. Eventually she wound up taking classes herself and, of course, found her way into competition. Always overshadowed by the big brother, Chelsey’s competition at the Amateur Internationals is less statistical as she never did forms and weapons, unlike her brother (yes, Trevor used to do both forms and weapons, both in the Amateurs and NBL) and she only won one Amateur title in sparring (2001 10-11 intermediate).

Receiving her blackbelt in 2002 she jumped straight into blackbelt competition at the following Super Grands where she earned a respectable first runner-up position in junior girls’ lightweight continuous sparring. In 2003 Nash completely broke loose not only winning both her junior point and continuous sparring divisions but never loosing a match in the double eliminations competition as well. With two titles tucked neatly away she returned in 2004 to again win her 12-14 year old point sparring division without a loss and was member of the winning junior girls’ point sparring team.

Nash admits that junior girls’ competition has gotten stiffer more recently and 2005 found a bigger challenge for Nash. While she did walk away with the title in her lightweight continuous sparring division and first runner-up in 12-13 point sparring, her final matches in each were exhausting to say the least. She was landed her first point sparring loss in eliminations play by newcomer Marissa Mayer whom she again fought and gained revenge against in the Grand Finale 7-2, but then fell in the final match 4-3 to take the first runner-up position. Her continuous sparring division proved just the opposite where she emerged from the eliminations unscathed giving her opponent, Susanna Boyd her only eliminations loss. But in the Grand Finale she dropped her first match to Boyd 128-124 forcing another eventful, action packed and rowdy match leaving herself as a controversial winner 149 to 139 for her fifth world title.

This year has been a challenge for Chelsey as back and knee injures have prevented her from a lot of competition. I asked if she might consider the less combative forms and weapons competition and she retorted “never, everybody would make fun of me”. Hey...they already do. Just kidding... had to get that one last one in.

Somehow I seriously doubt we’ve seen anywhere near the end of Chelsey Nash. I suspect we’ll see many more years of her winning titles as a junior let alone adult. We’ll just check it out in the years to come and report on it all when she makes the cover of Sport Karate Magazine. You will make the cover again won’t you?.