A team that gets excited to fight each other may seem intimidating. For senior Caoilinn Singopranoto, it’s her family.

Singopranoto is a black belt for the Orange County Irvine Goshin Kai dojo. Primarily practicing go-ju-ryu karate, she is the co-leader of the dojo’s nunchuck team and the team’s oldest member. She has also won gold for kata, a choreographed floor routine that incorporates various punches, kicks and poses, and silver in sparring in the inter-dojo tournaments against other members of the OCIGK dojo.

“It’s mostly a self defense martial art, rather than an offensive one,” Singopranoto said. “Our dojo puts heavy emphasis on not using what we’ve learned in class unless absolutely necessary. We’re taught all these moves for self defense, but we’re also taught to run from the conflict first, and only fight if we can’t run or talk it down.”

At the age of 4, Singopranoto started developing an interest in the sport of karate out of the hopes of becoming a ninja. Though these dreams have not been fulfilled quite yet, she finds joy through inspiring others by showing off her craft.

Primarily, she performs at demonstrations, such as at the Irvine Global Village Festival and Buena Park Culture Festival to inspire others to also join the dojo.

When she became a black belt, Singopranoto started learning different weapons including nunchucks, bo staff and escrima sticks. She and two other dojo members formed a team to create a routine featuring nunchucks for an upcoming demonstration in 2019. Since then, she has stuck with the team.

“It’s not only really satisfying when you get a routine down and it’s really smooth and you flow through it, but there’s a lot of really fun tricks you can do with it,” Singopranoto said.

Whenever there is an upcoming demonstration, Singopranoto and her team prepare a routine that matches up to the music by ensuring each chop is performed on beat. She works with senior sensei Tom Furukawa to determine which moves to showcase. Then, they pick out a song and synchronize the routine to it.

“Our process mostly consists of what moves can we put together into an actual sequence that are going to flow smoothly from one to another, and which of them are going to look cool together,” Singopranoto said. “We were just like, ‘Okay, we have this isolated move and this one and this one. Now let’s put that all together and see how that flows.’ If it looked good but didn’t flow well, we’d adjust.”

Before starting with nunchucks, Singopranoto’s favorite part of karate was sparring, or fighting a one-on- one match against another person.

“It’s enjoyable to fight against other kids in the class, especially if there’s one kid you just can’t beat and then you finally get to beat them and you’re like ‘Oh, I know how to win against you now,’” Singopranoto said. “That’s the fun part; it’s a good feeling when you win.”

Support from fellow members of the dojo is also instrumental to her success in karate because it helps foster an engaging environment and community of students.

“In the black belt class, it’s just all of us black belts together,” Singopranoto said. “There’s obviously the kids who know each other more than others, but the whole black belt class is just a big family. And then we line up and start kicking each other.”

Singopranoto also provides support to her peers by teaching them fundamental karate skills. Recently, she taught sophomore Alexa Matsuoka how to use the nunchucks, and now they work together as co-leaders of the nunchuck group.

“Caoilinn’s extremely funny and relatable, like we can sometimes make eye contact and understand what the other’s trying to say,” Matsuoka said. “We both love doing nunchucks and can absolutely crack up when the other messes up.”

Last Friday, Singopranoto was promoted from gold to red kanji on her belt to signify true dedication to karate and the start of training as an adult. In the future, she hopes to continue spending her time learning about karate.

“Our Shihan is fond of saying that the journey doesn’t end when you get to black belt; that’s when it really begins,” Singopranoto said. “Beyond the obvious exercise and self-defense bonuses I’m getting from doing it, I’m mostly just sticking with it because I like to do it, and I wanna keep learning more.”