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Hickey Karate Center
RICHARD WEINER
Legal News Reporter
Published: March 12, 2012
If you have ever seen the film The Karate Kid, or any other film which features a karate tournament, you can thank a few local folks for the format that many major tournaments take.
It may surprise people who are outside of the world of American karate how important the northeast Ohio area was to the development of that sport in this country. But one local karate master teacher, Patrick Hickey of Stow, was one of the central figures in the popularization of karate in North America.
Pat Hickey and his wife Pamela run the Hickey Karate Center (www.hickeykaratecenter.com) at 4540 Stow Rd., a 7,200 square foot facility that they built in 1996.
That center was in many ways a culmination of a life’s work in karate for the Hickeys.
Patrick “Pat” Hickey, now 61, came to the Akron area in the early 1970s after receiving his undergraduate degree from Thiel College in Pennsylvania. While studying for his master’s degree in economics at The University of Akron, he took a karate class, he said, “for the exercise.”
That exercise regimen quickly became the centerpiece of Hickey’s life, combined with the fact that he had met and married Pamela, who shared the same interests. The Hickeys worked out with local karate legend George Anderson, whom Hickey called, “a central figure in American karate.” They worked out at Anderson’s Akron Karate Center.
American karate in the 1970s was not particularly organized on a national level. With his business sense and economics degree, in conjunction with his karate training, the Hickeys, Anderson and a few of their compatriots set out to change that.
In the early 1970s they began training local police forces in karate. In 1975, they began an affiliation with the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) to conduct karate tournaments, the first such tournaments held in the U.S.
“I developed the format for the tournaments that the main organizations still use today,” said Pat Hickey.
Hickey’s journey also encompassed a number of karate styles and changes.
Although karate originally developed in Japan, many of the styles that Americans train in originated in Korea in the 1920s. Hickey used the term Songmookwan to differentiate this form of karate he learned from the Japanese Shotokan. Although the two forms are similar, the emphasis in the two can be considerably different. As Hickey explained, “when you look at someone who holds a position, the two look the same. But how you get from one position to another is very different The Korean version is very flowing, as opposed to the Japanese version, which is very rigid.” Korean karate became known as Tae Kwon Do, and in 1972 Hickey and friends started their first national organization, Central Tae Kwan Do. That organization still exists.
The AAU karate group became known as the USA Karate Federation in 1986—the first national governing body and Olympic member in the sport. It ran tournaments at the James A. Rhodes Arena on the campus of The University of Akron that would attract more than 3,000 participants from almost every state in the union.
Over time, Hickey explored other forms, helped found and run other karate organizations, worked with the U.S. Olympic karate organization, and somehow found time to create a career in commercial insurance, help rear three sons, and continue to teach the sport locally. He also teaches Latin dancing at Kent State and Pamela teaches yoga at the karate studio as well as yoga, karate and self-defense at Kent State.
Hickey’s karate studio does not fit into what most people probably think about when they consider what a karate studio does.
For one, said Hickey, most karate centers do not emphasize competitions. “Less than 10 percent of most members of karate clubs do enter competitions,” he said. For the most part, participants are looking for exercise and a community experience. Very few of them actually want to compete—although, of course, the studio does offer that training. But, he said, “Most people don’t want to go through that structure.”
Hickey Karate Canter spends a lot of time teaching younger folks karate skills and places a special emphasis on therapeutic programs for children who have problems with ADD/ ADHD.
The center runs programs for 3-and-a-half to 5-year-olds, for 5 to - year olds, youth and adult classes, judo and jujitsu, yoga and a new program, martial fighting, that is more fitness-oriented—martial arts training without the colored belts.
But the primary reason to go to the Hickey Karate Center is Pat Hickey himself—one of the founders of American karate.