Gripping news: Local Hapkido coach wins lifetime achievement award

Rudy Timmerman, a Sault man well known for his years of involvement in martial arts, a ninth degree black belt and Grandmaster of the Legion Hapkido Club, was honoured last weekend with a prestigious award at the Canadian Black Belt Hall Of Fame Gala held at the Palais De Congress in Gatineau, Quebec.

The award coincided with good performances by young Legion Hapkido members Madison Beriault and Zoe Mathieu at the annual Capitol Conquest martial arts event.

Full text of a Legion Hapkido Club news release follows:

“This weekend, Nov. 3-5, 2023, four Legion Hapkido members, plus parents and significant others, travelled to Ottawa in support of Coach Rudy W. Timmerman, who was nominated to receive the Masami Tsuruoka Lifetime Achievement Award at the Canadian Black Belt Hall Of Fame Gala, held at the Palais De Congress in Gatineau, Quebec. When presented with the award, the many hundreds who attended the sold out Gala stood up to give Coach Timmerman a standing ovation that lasted several minutes.

The Hall Of Fame Gala was paired with the annual Capitol Conquest martial arts event, and well over one thousand martial artists from Canada, the U.S., Mexico, Germany, France, Belgium and Norway participated in the weekend of training to hone their skills. 761 of them competed at the event, and two young students of the Legion Hapkido School, sponsored by Branch 25 of the Royal Canadian Legion, proudly wore their Legion Hapkido uniforms to join the competition.

Madison Beriault won first place in forms and first place in sparring while her teammate Zoe Mathieu took silver in sparring. The pair had worked hard to prepare for this huge international competition, and their hard work paid off. Both young ladies are part of the Legion Hapkido Youth Competition Team, and both have competed at a number of smaller events; however, to compete at an event of this size and caliber of competitors took a lot of courage for the two 10 year old girls.

Coach Timmerman and Chief Instructor Steve Jensen are extremely proud of their performance, but neither of them were surprised at the outcome. Coach Timmerman has practiced and taught martial arts for 73 years now, and over the more than 50 years of operating his schools in the Sault, has produced many World Class Competitors.

He recently promoted Chief Instructor Steve Jensen to 7th Degree Black Belt, and Steve, along with Master Michael Paciocco and Instructor Jim Ryan, run the Legion Hapkido School, under the watchful eye of Grandmaster Timmerman. Rudy, Steve, and Michael run the Hapkido Program for students aged eight to eighty, and Jim mainly looks after the very popular Ladies Self Defense Program Grandmaster Timmerman started as a free service to the Ladies of Sault Ste Marie.

The free Ladies Self Defense workshops were so popular that Timmerman ended up having to schedule a full time Ladies Self Defence program to run alongside the Hapkido program. The Legion Hapkido School is proud to share that they are the back to back Community Votes Platinum Winners for best martial arts school in the Sault for the years 2022 and 2023.

Classes for beginning children run on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m., and the more advanced children and adults train from 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. on those same evenings. Martial arts make a great Christmas Gift, and registrations for all classes are open now. Anyone interested in either program is welcome to contact Coach Rudy Timmerman at his email address.