Naugatuck, Home of Karate Champs
Sunday, November 30, 2003 NAUGATUCK
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The nondescript brick building sits on Church Street in Naugatuck. The first floor is home to a fabric store and a cigar shop. The third-floor windows are boarded and a plastic owl is perched on a sill to ward off the pigeons. It doesn't look anything like a place where world champions convene. But in fact the second floor at 100 Church Street is the Naugatuck hangout for Bergamo's Martial Arts, one of the foremost karate centers in North America, perhaps even the world. Want proof? At the International Sport Karate Association's U.S. breaking championships held last month in Las Vegas, Team Bergamo led by New Milford's Clinton Murphy, Waterbury's Raphael Velez and Cheshire's Peter DeMarco swept virtually every competition. Murphy won two national championships. The U.S. heavyweight breaking championship came when he put his right hand through two-inch cement patio blocks, 13 of them, with a single strike. His second title was in creative breaking. For that Murphy used various body parts to smash through wooden objects, like baseball bats, building materials most of them cement and even coconuts. Don't bother checking, those bats weren't cork-filled Sosa models. He could have stuffed the core with marshmallows if he wanted, anyone who kicks his way through two baseball bats with his naked shin is a champion in my book. Velez won the lightweight breaking division when he crashed through 12 patio blocks. Visit the Bergamo Web site, at www.bergamosmartialarts.com, and you can spend most of an afternoon browsing the list of national and international championships won by the team. On a recent Saturday afternoon, the Naugatuck karate center was alive with activity as students were tested by the black belt masters. The Naugatuck and Cheshire locations serve more than 150 students, and at least 30 of them are women. They come to learn self defense, a Bergamo specialty. But eventually, most students try their hand, or foot, or some other appendage, at breaking things. Bergamo arrived mid-session. At first glance he doesn't strike one as a karate master. He's short, 5-9 on a good day, with a rugged face and flecks of gray in his hair. He sits and chats amiably for a moment, then excuses himself to attend to the matter of creating world champions, or teaching a young woman how to disarm an attacker. In a matter of minutes Bergamo pops his head into the anteroom where visitors sit and sternly scolds instructors who are chatting it up with the media. "This is not a social hour," he barks. Seeing as how he can crack open my skull with his pinky, we agree to suspend the interviews. Instructor Drew Serrano, a Waterbury firefighter and a brave man, stays behind to chat. A karate master and a fifth degree black belt, Serrano describes the sport as a way to "test your own abilities. To test yourself and what you are capable of doing, just like any other athlete in any other sport." Eric Sousa, a Naugatuck police officer, a second degree black belt and also a Bergamo instructor, said that karate isn't just about power or strength. "A lot of it is about focus," Sousa said. Members of Team Bergamo will be featured tonight from 9-11 p.m. on the Discovery Channel's "Xtreme Martial Arts," and Team Bergamo was prominently featured on ESPN2 last week with re-broadcasts of the world championships. In short, when black belts gather to break things, Team Bergamo dominates the competition and the discussion. "There are a lot of good individual breakers," Serrano explains. "But Team Bergamo is renowned. We go as a team, with six or seven people." It is that team concept, and the emotional support it entails, that allows Team Bergamo to stand alone atop a heap of smashed cement. Serrano tosses around phrases that pass through me like a fist through a patio block, things like Kun Tao, the karate system used by the school, and Ki, which is our inner energy. The ability to collect that energy in one region of the body is the cornerstone for annihilating inanimate objects. Personally, I'd like to focus my Ki just enough to keep from falling down a flight of stairs. But for the masters at Bergamo's Martial Arts, it is the Ki that unlocks champions. There's a lot more to Team Bergamo than busting bricks. The team has won back-to-back world championships in the art of self defense, and it has pioneered a team demonstration using more than a dozen students in a three minute, 30 second program that combines self defense, breaking, stick work, forms, gymnastics and aerobic kicking. The demo team performs at competitions throughout the northeast, and it might well spawn a future competition. "What is it that makes us succeed?" Bergamo asks. "It is our team concept. We don't look for me, me, me. It is all about Us. The I' comes second. There are champions who are always asking to join our team. I tell them, What do we need you for?' If one of our people is not on top of his game, someone else on the team picks them up. It is that strength that holds us together." So if you're walking down Church Street in Naugatuck and you notice a building shaking right down to its foundation, don't be alarmed. It was just another bone-crunching body slam upstairs, at Bergamo's Martial Arts.
Joe Palladino is a Republican-American staff writer. He can be e-mailed at jpalladino@rep-am.com . All content, except where otherwise noted, © 1997-2003 American-Republican Inc. To be used by written permission only. |
