Amla’s our golden girl!

For a girl who stands just five foot three inches in her bare feet and weighs in at 49 kilograms, Derbarl Yerrigan receptionist Amla Sathasivam packs one heck of a punch.

Related topics: indigenous,karate

11 January 2010

So big, in fact, that it has just taken her to a gold medal in the Australian National Karate Championships for the second year running.

Having gone as far as she can go at a national level, the next step for Amla, who has just turned 18, would be to qualify for Australia’s team for the World Cup – and for the time being that would probably be the limit because, unlike other martial arts like judo and tae kwon do, karate is not an Olympic sport (although the pressure is on for that to change).

However, it could be that time constraints will prevent Amla from trying out for the national team, because she has just completed her first year of an arts degree at Murdoch University, majoring in – wait for it – counter-terrorism!

“The next two years are going to be full-on,” she said, “And after that I’m hoping to work for the Federal Police, or ASIO, or something similar.”

Amla’s interest in karate started when she was just eight years old, in part thanks to the example of her dad, Letchumanan (or Siva, as most people know him), who was a master of the sport having gained his qualifications in his home country, Malaysia.

“He certainly was a wonderful role model,” said Amla, “But I did make up my own mind to do karate. My parents give me the choice of learning a musical instrument (and it would have been the piano) or karate and the sport was more appealing to me, so that’s the way I went.”

Siva and Amla’s mother (Derbarl Yerrigan dental assistant Pearl Sathasivam) have backed their daughter, an only child, every step of the way, and she has been fortunate enough to enjoy not only training and mentoring from her father but also from some of the best in the business – state coach Eric Ho and Branco Bratich of the Yoesihkan Karate Academy, who is the father of Jessica Bratich, girlfriend of Test cricketer Mitchell Johnson.

Branco and Siva both say that Amla, who graduated from Willetton Senior High School, has a natural talent for karate and a fierce determination to succeed.

“She was winning competitions right from the word go,” said Siva, “Including the WA championships for her age group. Then a few years ago she seemed to hit a brick wall when she entered the nationals and came fourth two years on the trot.

“The thing is that even though you might have good technical skills, which Amla does, it’s the psychology that marks you out as a champion. So we filmed her fights and tried to work out what was going wrong.

“She was absolutely focused on studying the tapes and the amount of training she put in was amazing because she was determined to get that good medal, and at the third attempt that’s exactly what she did.

“Then in August this year at Joondalup Arena, she followed that up with another gold.”

So the message is clear: Amla is one person troublemakers would be wise not to mess with!

Story and photograph courtesy of Adrian Kenyon, Derbarl Yerrigan Health Service.