The history of the club

Stara Zagora

The founder of Sports Karate Club Montana, Petko Enchevski, first met Kyokushinkai karate in 1982, as a student in Stara Zagora. His teacher was Senpai Valentin Palashev, from the Dimitrovgrad school of Senpai Ivan Shishinyov.

While studying medicine in Stara Zagora, Valentin Palashev formed a group and began teaching Kyokushinkai karate. It was that group which laid the foundations of the strong Stara Zagora club known today as Asken, led by Petko Enchevski's team-mate of those years, Asen Asenov.

The first sessions in Montana

After finishing his higher education and returning to Montana, Petko Enchevski began holding the first karate sessions with friends. At first they trained outdoors, and from October 1986 regular sessions began in the gymnasium of the Economics Technical School. Before long the hall was too small for everyone who wanted to come.

The hall runs out of room

Several open sessions were held to make karate known in the town. The last of them took place in the Mladost hall, which filled with spectators to the very limit.

Soon more than 500 people had signed up to train and the sessions moved to the basketball hall at the stadium. When everyone turned up, even that proved too small.

The Septemvri tournament

The very next year Montana organised the Septemvri national tournament for boys and girls. The competition carried the rank of a national championship and drew more than 200 entrants, and the ambition of the organisers was for it to become an annual event.

The club is founded

In 1988, after a founding assembly and with the legal assistance of Orlin Boyanov, Sports Karate Club Montana was officially established as a non-profit public organisation.