Gemma Thomas, who learnt she will be representing New Zealand while chatting to her mum on Monday night last week, says "it’s quite a crazy thing to try and wrap your head around when you’ve been working towards it for so long".
"All the people who are normally off to the world champs are, like, the people I’ve looked up to my whole life, and so I’m like,‘oh, my god, I’m actually kind of in that arena now’."
A year 13 student at Christchurch’s Rangi Ruru Girls’ School, she started as a Queenstown karate kid when she was six, and attributes her subsequent success to her first teacher/sensei, Pat Quaid.
"He gave me all of my basics, and I would not have got so far if I didn’t have any of that.
"He just has so much to teach, and he teaches in such a different way than all my other teachers, and I just love it."
Though she has been at boarding school — initially, St Andrew’s College — since year 9, "I still sometimes train with him when I’m home on holiday".
Her first taste of international competition came at the Oceania champs in New Caledonia last year, where she won bronze in junior kumite in her weight division.
Gemma also competed in Manila, in the Philippines, early this year.
"I was very close to getting into the repechages, and then I lost within the last two seconds."
Late last month she won golds in both the under-19 premier kata and premier kumite at the South Island secondary school champs.
She followed that at the Canterbury champs with a gold in female open kata and silvers in female U21 premier kata and 16/17 open kumite.
Ironically, her closest competition was year 13 Wakatipu High student Nicole Carey, who is also taught by Quaid, who won the U21 premier kata and otherwise came runner-up to her.
Gemma trains 15 to 20 hours a week and has a mix of Christchurch and Auckland coaches.
In Poland, she says "I’m excited to be able to verse [spar with] the best, that’s an incredible opportunity in itself".
"I can only stick to my training and do my personal best, but I’m not going to say, ‘oh, I’ll win’, because that’s probably not going to happen.
"I hope I can still get many opportunities like this and continue it on to go to senior worlds — I would love to achieve that as well and just continue going as far as I possibly can."
As for what Gemma loves most about the sport, "I just love the feeling of it".
"If I’ve had a rough day or school stress or whatever, I go to training and come back and feel, like, 10 times lighter."
She even says her main kick is not the competitive element — "I don’t go just for the comps, like, I enjoy all the trainings, and the comps are just a wee bonus".
