16-year-old’s Games target is Crystal clear

 Crystal Mari, 16, is another medal prospect for the national karate team in the junior and senior kata division at the Pacific Games.

The saying, like father like daughter, fits young Mari who took up the martial art when she was 10 and has worked diligently over the past six years to be worthy of a place in the national squad.

Age restrictions keep her from competing in the point contact and full contact kumite at the Pacific Games.

But she can compete in the kumite at the Oceania Championships in Noumea, New Caledonia, next year.

Father Carl, who is the national karate federation president, said his daughter decided to take up the sport almost by default having watched him compete and training all her life.

Crystal knows her father may be the president but says she still wants to earn her spot on the team. 

Of Western New Britain and Autonomous Region of Bougainville parentage, Mari graduated from Port Moresby Grammar School last year and will complete her education at Gordon Secondary School.

Mari said the challenge of being a teenager and a national sports representative had taught her to organise her time and balance her studies and her training.

She said she eventually wanted to represent the country in kata and kumite.

Mari will compete in the women’s junior Under-16 and the senior individual and team kata during the Games.

That will be her first appearance for the country.

In 2011, she competed in taekwondo but switched to karate and took part in only kata competitions, winning silver and bronze medals at the Queensland Summer championships in 2013 and 2014. 

Since she took up karate full time Mari has won a silver medal at the Fiji Invitational and came fourth at the Melbourne Institute Open, fifth at the Thailand Open, and won a bronze medal at the Oceania Championships in Fiji in the cadet and junior division.

This will be her first Pacific Games and the young lass, with the help of head coach and mentor Trevor Roberts and her local coaches, is improving.