Nigel Knighton // PART 1... the journey of finding passion in Karate, coaching and teaching

We are joined today by the marvellous Nigel Knighton. A 5^th Dan in Karate, sports teacher and father. Nige takes us on his sporting journey of how he found a passion in the sport industry and made a career of it.

This is quite a close to home episode for me as I knew Nige as Mr Knighton, during my 6 years of high school. Nige started off as my year 7 sport teacher – when a very non athletic Fiona used to forget her sport uniform or spend an hour running away from the ball.  

I was lucky enough to be a part of a year 9 self defence class, again taught by Mr Knighton where I started to discover that sport wasn’t just about the mainstream football and netball. Mix that with finding my gills in the pool, as Nige describes my swimming. I decided to do my certificate 4 in Sport and Recreation as part of year 11 and 12, lead by Mr Knighton. It was not only my favourite subject during those final years, but the one I put the most time into and thus did the best at.

When I look back now, if it wasn’t for Nige’s welcoming and engaging attitude towards sport, I may have been one of those kids who lost interest and dropped out of this wonderful world I’m now involved in.

After a little bit of market research via Facebook and Instagram, to keep with the shorter format of season 2, this episode is split into two parts.

In part one of this interview we chat about Nige’s early years and what made him passionate about not only his sport of Karate but teaching and coaching the younger generations.