Stephanie Kaup

About

► Resume:

I’m a girl, who in the year 1985 was born in the hospital of Danderyd outside of Stockholm. I grew up in Täby, a suburb of Stockholm together with my family (Mother Anneli, father Peter, little sister Evelin). My dad is from Austria, which made me grow up with two languages and cultures.

Something that marked me since I was I child is the love of my parents concerning good food (They have their own restaurant in Stockholm). It isn’t a coincident that we children, too, are very interested in good and exotic food.

Background: School
To start in the Kindergarden of the German School in Stockholm became quite natural, as my parents thought it was important to keep up my second language. The German School also had a good reputation, which made the choice even easier. Two years later it was time to start the first grade. It all started with a little test, to see if the children were on the level to start school. I don’t remember the test itself, but I DO remember many nervous parents. One guy from my group didn´t make it (already at a early stage, the school showed their expectations).

The years went by, slowly, and you never really expected the school to find an end. The worst thing with the school though, was to see all your friends come and go, as many of them just stayed for a couple of years in order to return back or move on to Germany/ Austria (or other country). So already at an early age you learned to say “Good Bye” with the awareness that only a few would come back for a visit. Spring 2005 became finally my time to say Good Bye and leave the building I had been visiting for the last 15 years.

Of course I will in some way miss that school, but that is nothing I feel at the moment. Enough is enough and now I’m REALLY looking forward to a new start! In the autumn 2005 I will start my studies at the Sports-College in Stockholm. Ironically I will have the same route to the school, as I had to my old school, because they are located almost in the same street.

Background: Karate
At the same time I started first grade I started my Karate practise. The choise of starting with karate came as my mother, who once herself made sports on a highlevel, not wanted us to come under the pressure of hard training and competitions at such a low age. Karate didn’t ask that and you were able to perform it at your own speed.

After all I was training karate a little in my own speed and reached the green-white belt after about six years. At that time I didn’t train regulary at all, almost nothing at all to be honest and my Father started wondering why he should pay the fee for my training. So he gave me an ultimatum:

“Start training or let it be.”

In some way I did like the karate-training after all, but I didn’t become much more serious with my training anyway. It was as my Father said: “Participate on the next competition, take a medal and you may continue with karate!” It may sound hard, but my father and I always use to make bets out of everything, because it always makes it easier to motivate. In the end I really took a medal on the competition, but that was because there were only four competitors in the group and both third-placed got a medal.

This became strangely enough in some way the starting shot for me competing. In the beginning I did just compete in Kumite (fighting), but after having been disqualified (thanks to the childis children-rules just found in Sweden!:P) after 3 secounds on a competition, I decided to start with Kata (Form), too. In the winter 2004/-05, though, I put an end to the Kata-training, as I felt much stronger for the Kumite part and wanted to put more training on that.

Looking back I have since some years been a part of the Swedish National Team now and have also won several titles, which you can read about under “Results”. You should perhaps know, that I became double Swedish Junior Master -04, double Swedish Senior Master -05 and Austrian Junior Master -04. I have the privilege to be able to compete in two countries, Sweden and Austria.

The traditional Karate, has had to step back a bit, but I can say that I after all have reached the second black belt. But as you can perform karate your whole life, I´m not afraid to miss anything. Besides of karate I have also been training Kobujutsu, which is a traditional weapon-art from Japan. It really fitted me well, but also here it wasn’t time enough for it. Apart from all the sports and school, I have been playing the piano for ten years with my lovely teacher Madelaine Z., who really is one of the persons I will miss from school.

So; this is some of what I can tell you about myself, it ain’t too personal…