October Referee Update: USA Karate is Making More Strides as we Near the End of the Year!

The strong performance continues for the regional referee program. 203 new officials received licenses YTD by the end of the 3rd quarter. There are twelve sanctioned seminars scheduled for the 4th quarter, bringing the total number of regional seminars for the year to 42. Three of the seminars are also scheduled with a sanctioned tournament, providing an opportunity to apply and execute the skills reviewed and practiced at the seminar.

Congratulations to our USA international officials that participated in the WKF Series A event in Malaysia in October. All three of our international officials, Cedric Barksdale, Christopher Hodgin, and Senthil Thiyagarajan, served in critical leadership roles at the event.

USA Karate

We are extremely proud of our international referees Fariba Madani, Kathy Bailey, and William Gatch, who represented us at the Paris Qualifier in October. William Gatch also provided the referee perspective with Billy Brennan during the commentary at the event. Congratulations to the US athletes, coaches, and USA Karate staff that participated in the event; they all did a fantastic job. We are very excited that Eddie Sagilyan won his ticket to Cairo and will join USA team members already competing at the event. Eddie was discussed as a strong contender for the World Championship during the recent WKF podcast featuring coach Kamran Madani; it was definitely a well-earned outcome!

USA Karate

Fariba Madani, Kathy Bailey, Cedric Barksdale, and William Gatch will be officiating at the World Championships in November in Cairo. This event limits referee participation to WKF RC members, the top 30 ranked officials, and two officials from National Federations. All four of these representatives attended a minimum of four international events on three different continents. Thank you for your dedication to ensuring the athletes have the best representatives at the World Championship!

In December, several athletes, coaches, and officials head to the Youth League in Venice.

We are looking forward to having many officials at upcoming sanctioned seminars, including the one in Dallas being conducted by Fariba Madani on December 5th as part of a sanctioned tournament pairing with the Suzuki Cup on December 6th. There is also a Coaches Certification Course with Dustin Baldis at the same event on December 5th. For the full list of upcoming sanctioned events, see Sanctioned Events - All | USA Karate.

Thank you to all our officials for their continued efforts and support. We look forward to seeing all our officials at the 2026 US Open, April 2-5 in Fort Worth, TX, and the National Championships, July 16-19 in Spokane, WA.