EDMONTON – Dark Horse Martial Arts isn’t just a grappler’s paradise anymore.
Competing at its first striking tournament as a club, the Canmore-based martial arts academy won four golds and eight medals in kickboxing at the Fire and Ice Championships in Edmonton last Friday and Saturday (April 28-29).
The most experienced local striker was Maddie MacPherson, a professional Muay Thai fighter, who won gold in the women’s advanced category. Dark Horse’s Alex Stanley took silver.
In women’s novice, Dark Horse’s Erica Stefan won gold and Lynsey Dobish won bronze.
In men’s heavyweight, Dark Horse’s Stewart Brown celebrated with a gold medal and Waris Abdul took bronze.
In men’s lightweight, Thomas Louis-Jacques took gold and Nic Poohkay had a bronze medal performance.
Travis Erlam, head instructor at Dark Horse who was on-site coaching the team, said it’s been cool to watch the evolution of the martial arts club from predominantly grapplers to becoming well-rounded in other disciplines such as striking.
“It’s been a trip to see how far everyone has come, and how far the club has come in the past few years in terms of striking,” said Erlam. “I expect we will keep showing up to these events as much as we show up to the grappling events.”
Louis-Jacques, who’s trained with the club since 2021, said the team pushes each other to get better.
“We try to get better and try to improve as a group, and I think that’s crucial in any club, the culture,” said Louis-Jacques. “I think Travis does a really good job of, you know, harbouring like a safe environment, but also an environment where everyone’s kind of pushed to their own pace and everyone’s kind of looking just to get better.”
The tournament up north was “light kickboxing” rules, meaning there was no knockouts or knees to the head, among others. However, Dark Horse club members said fists and kicks weren’t exactly landing softly.
Louis-Jacques, who’s looking for a full-contact bout, won all three of his fights with skill, technique and some wicked combos.
“I wasn’t really going for a knockout, in my head. The intention of how I was throwing was more to land rather than to injure,” said Louis-Jacques. “But it’s definitely a bit of an adjustment though, having someone trying to punch you in the face, no matter how hard they're coming at you.”
One of the club’s gold medallists, Stefan, won both her bouts with heart, skill and controlled aggression. She said she “wasn’t expecting to be hit as hard as I did.”
“I had a moment where all of a sudden I just snapped out of my lightness and just started giving ‘er and just tried to keep it technical because it wasn’t a knockout [tournament], it was based off technicalities,” said Stefan. “At the end, I was fairly shocked when I felt my arm go up. I thought I had lost and a whole flood of emotion came over when [the ref] threw my arm up, considering it was my first fight ever.”
She added she’s keen to fight in one full-contact bout at some point in the future.
The Canmore club started with only jiu-jitsu, a type of ground fighting using submissions, and started its striking program in 2020. Since then it has had two members fight amateur mixed martial arts and one in pro-Muay Thai.
“It’s cool to see everyone’s unique styles grow and evolve, whether is Muay Thai, kickboxing, boxing, [Taekwondo] or MMA style striking,” said Erlam. “Each person brings a new perspective and we try to take what is useful and implement it at the club.”
