While Roy Tippenhauer has had success as an athlete, his real passion the last 30 years or so has been passing on what he knows about karate.
He opened his club, Campbell River Shito-Ryu, in 1985, and in that time he’s trained athletes of all ages and levels, including his daughters, to become their best. He typically goes for 12 to 15 hours a week, outside of summers or school breaks.
Some students train for years, while others move on but often think about getting back into the sport.
“I think everybody that does karate at some point in their life still remembers it,” he says.
Over the years, Roy has mentored athletes such as Chad Edberg, who earned fourth- and fifth-place results at the world championships. Roy mentions many other names while browsing through an enormous scrapbook of clippings about his students.
“It took a lot of years, but it’s been a really interesting journey,” he says.
The dojo has earned 12 national champion titles, a Pan-American bronze, and a few top 10 world finishes.
“I don’t take credit for the successes,” he says.
Roy also thinks sports for young kids have gotten too serious, with too much emphasis on results rather than fun and learning. He thinks “free play” is missing for kids all too often.
Edberg pressed him to open the classes to younger kids, so Roy has been working with students as young as five.
“It’s Chad’s fault. He told me we had to start teaching five-year-olds,” he says. “I love the little tots, they’re the most fun.”
Roy has had coaches move on to the national team, and he also coached Team BC’s zone 6 and hosts a large karate tournament in Campbell River each year. He has a diploma in high performance coaching and summarizes the philosophy behind karate.
“It’s about discipline and respect, not about domination,” he says.
He has served on the boards for Karate BC and Karate Canada, and is active in the community, collecting for the Knights of Columbus Christmas Hamper Fund through the club.
While he’s proud of the honours his students have earned, he emphasizes the club, rather than concentrating all its efforts on a small number of elite athletes, focuses on making each member improve. Personal growth, he says, is the basis for the culture of Shito-Ryu.
“We concentrate on personal bests rather than results,” he says.
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