MARIANAS UNITE IN KARATE DREAM FESTIVAL

PRESS RELEASE – A 17-member delegation from WKO Shinkyokushinkai Guam and WKO Shinkyokushinkai Northern Mariana Islands returned home this week from the Karate Dream Festival 2026 International Championship in Tokyo with a historic first, three individual kata victories, and standout performances across the largest full-contact karate tournament ever held.

The Dream Festival, hosted July 18–19 at the Yoyogi National Stadium First Gymnasium by the World Karate Organization Shinkyokushinkai, drew 4,057 entrants from 24 countries and regions — a field certified by Guinness World Records as the most entries in a full-contact karate championship in history. The two Marianas branches, which share a branch chief and traveled as a single delegation while competing under their own flags, fielded athletes ranging in age from 6 to 70 in individual kumite, individual kata, and group kata, facing opponents from Japan, Kazakhstan, Canada, the Philippines, South Africa, Australia, China, and Europe.

The delegation’s landmark achievement came in group kata, where Kai Jalen Balmeo, Yennafer Celis, and Mei Joy Balagtas debuted the Marianas’ firstever group kata team, performing in the All-Japan General division — a discipline that demands three athletes execute forms with perfectly synchronized timing, breathing, and spirit.

“To debut that event on the sport’s biggest stage and deliver an excellent performance is a milestone for karate in the Marianas,” said Chris Biolchino, branch chief of WKO Shinkyokushinkai Guam and WKO Shinkyokushinkai Northern Mariana Islands.

In individual kata, Yennafer Celis and Mei Joy Balagtas each won in the All-Japan Women’s division against international black-belt fields, and Joseph Biolchino won in the boys’ division. Balagtas and Celis each competed in all three disciplines the tournament offers. Balagtas won in both individual events and advanced to the quarterfinals of the All-Japan U25 Women’s division — the highest level of women’s competition at the tournament — where her performance drew recognition from spectators throughout the arena. Celis completed her three events in a single day: an individual kata victory in the morning, the historic group kata debut, and a senior kumite bout in the All-Japan Women’s division that afternoon.

Isaiah Orr of WKO Shinkyokushinkai Northern Mariana Islands, the delegation’s youngest member at six years old, earned his first international victory with a strong performance from the first exchange, followed by a composed second-round fight on the Yoyogi floor. Biolchino, eleven, added a semifinal run in full-contact kumite to his kata victory — winning bout after bout against an international field and finishing one fight from the podium in a division that awarded only its top two finishers — the youngest athlete in the delegation to win in both disciplines.

In the days before the tournament, the delegation trained at the Minato Tokyo Bay branch dojo of Shihan Yasukazu Koi, Executive Director of the WKO, sharing the floor with members of two Shinkyokushin branches from Canada — some of whom the Marianas athletes would face days later in competition.

“Standing on the courts at Yoyogi, inside a world-record event, on the same stage where world champions are crowned, represents years of building Shinkyokushin karate in the Marianas,” Biolchino said. “It proves to our young people that the path from a dojo on Guam or Saipan to the sport’s biggest arena is real.”