Af­ter more than 20 years of en­durance and hard work Sem­pai, (oth­er­wise known as se­nior in­struc­tor) Lex Mark Springer, was re­cent­ly pro­mot­ed to a sec­ond De­gree Black Belt. The son of Lex (se­nior) and Mau­reen Springer, two of T&T's top in­struc­tors, re­cent­ly sur­passed the tech­ni­cal and aca­d­e­m­ic re­quire­ments set by the T&T Karate Fed­er­a­tion (T&TKF) Tech­ni­cal Com­mit­tee. Springer (ju­nior) had to demon­strate Jion, Bas­sai Dai, Tek­ki Shodan in ac­cor­dance with the skill ap­pro­pri­ate for rank test­ing. His ad­vanced skill and un­der­stand­ing of the ka­ta ap­pli­ca­tion and an above av­er­age show­ing of the ku­mite (spar­ring) tech­nique, boost­ed his prospects of the pro­mo­tion.

His grade will be in­clud­ed in the Na­tion­al Black Belt reg­is­trar and the Dan records of the World Unit­ed Karate Or­ga­ni­za­tion (WUKO). His achieve­ment will al­so be re­layed and record­ed with­in the Min­istry of Sport (MOS), of which the TTKF is a mem­ber. The se­nior in­struc­tor at the Hoben School in Karate, lo­cat­ed in Mt Lam­bert, re­cent­ly passed his Amer­i­can Sport Ed­u­ca­tion Pro­gramme (ASEP) Coach­ing Prin­ci­ples course. Springer is cur­rent­ly pur­su­ing his Na­tion­al Ref­er­ees li­cense with the T&T Karate Fed­er­a­tion. The ever ad­vanc­ing in­struc­tor hopes to be­come a spe­cial­ty coach for the T&T na­tion­al team. His area of ex­per­tise is Ku­mite (free spar­ring) and Springer is known to pos­sess the gift of im­part­ing knowl­edge to his stu­dents, while he al­so un­der­stood to be es­pe­cial­ly pro­fi­cient with chil­dren.