Not only are the good folks at Sudbury MMA sending more and more athletes to the WAKO (kickboxing) National Championships with every passing year, but their athletes are returning home with more and more titles.

The 10-athlete delegation produced no less than seven titles, including two each courtesy of Emily Veerbeek, Adriano Grano and Owen Boisvenue, with Ethan Boyd rounding out the Sudbury collection of hardware.

"I would say that I was not that surprised," noted Sudbury MMA head coach John Cole, with Joey Prevost lending a much-appreciated helping hand at the competition that was hosted at the Scotiabank Convention Centre in Niagara Falls.

"The people that we brought to nationals have done a lot of work, not just in their training but also in other competitions," Cole added.

Sophia Vance, Elisabeth Richardson, Malcolm Blue, Mauricio Pulido Mejia, Dominic Jayetileke and Amine Boumalek rounded out the nickel city crew who made the trek to the Falls, a grouping that represents but a small part of the Sudbury MMA membership.

"Ninety percent (90%) of my student base are doing kickboxing as a social activity, for fitness," said Cole. "They don't do any form of competition."

Then there are the likes of Emily Verbeek, a native of Timmins who arrived at Laurentian University to pursue her studies equipped with a background in brazilian jiu-jitsu from back home.

"When I started school in 2021, I wanted to give kickboxing a shot, so I tried Sudbury MMA and stuck with it," said Verbeek, one of six children from a very athletic family, with older sister Sarah suiting up with the Princeton Tigers women's hockey team from 2017 to 2022.

Cole noted that of the athletes who have a competitive bent, the bulk will participate in an entry level event in either kickboxing or jiu-jitsu, a tandem that makes a great deal of sense in the mind of Verbeek.

"In jiu-jitsu, I am so used to grabbing the head and working for positions from there, I find that it was easier to transfer some of the jiu-jitsu skills to the clinch part of kickboxing," she said.

"It's still different, but I feel that it helped."

Following is a bout breakdown for the Sudbury MMA gold medal winners:

Emily Verbeek
beat Kelly Ho (Ottawa Fight & Fitness)
beat Stefanie Herron (Pound4Pound - Pickering)
beat Marie-Pier Fournier (Kombat Sport Rive-Nord - Repentigny, PQ)

Owen Boisvenue
beat Connor Hayes (Northstar Martial Arts - Sudbury)
beat Alyas Bandali (Elevation Martial Arts - Markham)
beat Jake Wells (Golden Tiger - Hanover)

Adriano Grano
beat Kelly Taylor (Ottawa Fight & Fitness)
beat Harleen Ghuman (Hook Up Muay Thai - North York)
beat Melissa Muise (Guelph MMA)

Ethan Boyd
beat Ibrahim Fahmi (Martial Arts Fitness Academy - Mississauga)
beat Smida Chady (Kombat Sport Rive-Nord - Repentigny, PQ)
beat Angus Kwong (Kudo Canada - Mississauga)