Hoover teen makes USA Jr. Olympic Karate Team

After years of training in martial arts and competing in tournaments, Hoover resident Arden Campbell this fall made the USA Jr. Olympic Karate Team at the Chicago Nationals. 

Campbell, an 11th grader at The Altamont School, is the fourth athlete from Alabama and the third female ever to make the team, according to her father, Shane Campbell.

She’s currently a third-degree black belt and has been training in karate and other forms of martial arts since she was 7 years old. With the USA Jr. Olympic Karate Team, she competes in kumite, also known as sparring.

Martial arts is a way for her to release energy and also has helped with her self-confidence, she said.

“I was pretty shy,” Campbell said. “It helped me learn how to get past that. Now it’s become more like family to me. Some of my closest friends are here, and it’s just my happy place.” 

Campbell assists her sensei, Keith MacConkey, with self-defense classes for women at USA Martial Arts Bluff Park Dojo, where she has done most of her martial arts training. Campbell has trained in every martial art that the dojo offers, including karate, aikido, judo, jiu jitsu and iaido — the art of the sword. 

MacConkey and Campbell’s parents, Shane and Valerie Campbell, said they were excited to see all of her hard work pay off.

“To have something pay off after all that hard work, that was my biggest happiness for her,” her father said. “She climbed up the mountain and reached it, so to speak.” 

Campbell said she has been to the national tournament four times and lost a match the first time she competed. “It was really tough, but Sensei MacConkey was kind of like my rock, and he’s always helped me push forward, “ Campbell said.

Losing was no fun, “but now that I’ve pushed past that and gotten to where I want to be, it’s been worth all those years of failures and not making it,” she said.

She has seen martial arts help so many people and give them confidence in what their bodies can accomplish, she said. Even though there’s a lot of physicality involved, martial arts is mostly mental, Campbell said. 

“Martial arts, I’d say, is 90% mental,” she said. “A lot of it is learning to control not only how your body is moving physically, but how to overcome your fears, your insecurities and how to push past when things get really tough. You learn to push through that and accomplish your goals.”

After she graduates high school, Campbell said she will major in Greco-Roman studies after finding a love for Latin when she decided to take a class at her high school. She loves poetry and decided to take a Latin class on a whim to see if she’d like it, she said.

“I don’t know, I just fell in love with all of that,” Campbell said. “I hope to one day be a Latin teacher and hopefully take that love that I found and help someone else find it, too.” 

She’s looking to attend either Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi, or the University of Denver. 

Campbell was set to represent the United States in a tournament in Venice, Italy, in December.