Karen Sheperd’s awesome acceptance speech at the Long Beach International Karate Championships Hall of Fame Awards on on July 29, 2023.
Actress and Black Belt champion Karen Sheperd was the first woman to be rated #1 in the Karate Illustrated magazine ratings.
At a time when there were no ratings in existence for women in Martial Arts Forms competition, trailblazer Karen fought to establish those ratings so that more women would compete.
Karen Sheperd held the #1 title for 2 years: 1979 and 1980.
In this video, she recounts her accomplishment from her first Long Beach Internationals tournament win as a brown belt, returning to win it as a Black Belt and now accepting the Hall of Fame Award at the tournament on July 29, 2023.
Transcript
I’d like to thank Mr. Steve Cooper for this great honor and the whole weekend, and for his passion to bring life back into the biggest tournament in the country, The Long Beach Internationals. I would also like to thank Eric Lee, the King of Kata, who for inspired me in 1975 when I saw him on stage in San Francisco performing kata. He was the king and that is what I wanted to do. Malia Dacascos was also performing, and I was blowen away. So I packed my bags, went to Denver, and that’s what I decided to do.
And I’ve got to thank Cindy for all of her incredibly hard work helping to make this possible, and all of Eric’s appearances. And I’d like to thank Mr. Esau McKnight you assisting me this weekend, for his great friendship, and, instead of my husband, because of difficult circumstances, could not come. And I have to thank my husband for all of his support because living with me ain’t easy.
I need to thank Malia, she’s not here. I wish she could have been. She was inducted last year and I was thrilled for her. I wouldn’t be here without her coaching me and making me a champion. And it was hard work. It was not easy. Wow the arena. I hear there might be a chance of getting that back. Eighty percent 80% chance.
You know what, I walked into the Long Beach Internationals, I was a Brown Belt, a kid, and it is massive. And I looked up at it like, I saw gold, I don’t know why, but it was just so impressive. And I won it as a Brown Belt. And then Malia and Sifu Al [Dacascos] moved to Germany so I had to go to Germany and I trained really hard for 3 months, I mean insanely hard, came back, won the Long Beach Internationals as a Black Belt. That was considered the Golden Age of kata, when things were picking up with musical forms and we had people like John Chung, Anthony Chan, Gary Forbach, Dale Kirby, Hidy Ochiai, Chuckie Curry, Tayari Casel . . . It was just really, really amazing.
There were no ratings for women and I thought that more women would compete. So I, I don’t know where I got this courage, but I confronted, I had a meeting set up with Ronaldo Garden at Karate Illustrated and I said, why aren’t women rated in forms?
And he said, well because promoters don’t want to pay for the trophies, because not enough women compete. So, I said how can we make it happen?
And he said, well if you get a petition together and get other women to sign it, and convince promoters to have divisions for women and we’ll see where it goes.
Long story short, got it done. I held the title in ’79 and ’80 before I passed that baton.
Pioneers have to be tough, they don’t win popularity contests. I heard that quote on a TV show and I thought, yes, that’s true.
I traveled the circuit alone. I had no fellow students. I had no family to cheer me on. I had people like the great Howard Jackson. Yes. I have Linda Denley and Jeff Smith. I had those people who cheered me on.
I retired from competition to co-star in my first movie [The Shinobi Ninja] with Eric Lee and Tadashi Yamashita in Japan. Then I moved to LA because I got good by the bug there, and just started studying acting and off I went. And I traveled all over the world, had amazing experience, and last night I was gazing out of my 12th floor window, looking out at the harbor, and the Arena and I heard a voice, and that voice said, Karen, look where you are. And I just soaked it all in, and I just got to my knees, and I praised God for having guided me my whole life even thought I didn’t know he was there. And here I was looking out over, when I was a little kid walking into that Arena, as a brown belt, and I saw my whole life flash, and here I am tonight, and the message is, whatever you dream and believe and work really hard at you can achieve. And I want to pass that message on to all young people. And if you do it with the Lord, anything is possible. Thank you, so much. Mr. Cooper. This means a great deal to me. Thank you.
