After landing on junior national team, Anchorage karate competitor Bella Marsh is aiming high

Bella Marsh is heading into her freshman year at South Anchorage High but will only be able to attend classes part time. She has opted for homeschooling the rest of the time, so she can make a full-time commitment to the martial art of karate.

The 14-year-old earned a bronze medal in the Kata discipline and a spot on the U.S. Junior National Team for her impressive outing at the 2023 USA Karate Nationals in the 14-to 15-year-old age group last month in early July in Richmond, Virginia.

“It was just a really cool experience because I’ve been working at this for so long,” Marsh said.

When she was a young child, her parents tried to get her interested in more traditional sports and activities for girls. Her older sister was a standout gymnast growing up and they just figured she’d follow the same or a similar path.

However, when she was about eight years old, Marsh was drawn to karate after seeing all the success her coach Rickyjon Balgenorth, who just recently departed for college at Purdue University, had in the sport.

“He really inspired me and I started doing it and I just stuck with it,” she said.

[Precision and power are taking an Anchorage teen to the Junior Pan Am Games in karate]

Marsh has only competed in three national tournaments — two in an advanced youth division — before her bronze medal-winning performance at the elite division for her age group.

She competes in the Kata discipline, which involves a display of specific techniques and forms without physically engaging with an opponent.

Once upon a time, she was interested in the combat form of martial arts before falling in love with Kata.

“I actually used to want to be (in mixed martial arts) but my other coach that I had convinced me to do Kata, and it’s been great,” Marsh said.

Yoshi Hiro “Tom” Okamoto has been teaching the martial art of karate for nearly 40 years and is the owner of Okamoto’s Karate in Anchorage, where Marsh got her start and still trains.

He has had many talented students over the years who have gone on to have successful careers using the lessons they learned at his dojo, but he described Marsh’s rise to prominence in the sport as “meteoric.”

“She’s always been the type of person that was very energetic, very focused and hardworking,” Okamoto said. “As far as athletes go and students go, she’s definitely different from the norm, because she’s probably more driven than the average student that we see in the dojo.”

He believes those characteristics have “her on the path she is now, where she’s done so well on the national level.”

Marsh has been surprised by her swift ascension in the sport on the national level.

“I’ve risen really fast,” she said. “I never expected to be going so far with how I’m doing and how well I’m doing, so it’s been a crazy experience for sure.”

In just two years, she has managed to accomplish what some martial artists take half their lifetimes trying to achieve to no avail.

Marsh believes a consistent routine has been an essential part of setting herself up for success.

“You could have all the talent in the world, but if you don’t have consistency, then you’re not going to get where you want to go in martial arts,” she said.

Okamoto considers himself fortunate to have had so many successful martial artists come through his dojo over the years and says that Marsh already stacks up among the best of them.

“She’s definitely one of the finest students I’ve ever had in the school for sure,” he said. “This is still the beginning of her arc toward something really great, so I’m confident that she’s going to achieve any goal she sets for herself.”

Going for gold is the ‘main goal’

Recently, Marsh has taken her training to another level. Her parents converted their living room into her own personal dojo where she can practice with her U.S. National Team coach, Jarrett Leiker, via Zoom.

”I have mirrors and a whole setup,” she said. “I’ll practice for four to five hours a day, and a lot of that is weight training and conditioning.”

Her long-term aspirations in karate go “above and beyond” just making the U.S. National Team.

“I want to be able to be in the Olympics one day once they have karate back,” Marsh said. “I want to win for the USA and that’s my main goal.”

Karate debuted at the Olympics in the 2020 Games that were held in Tokyo in 2021. While it won’t be included in next year’s games in Paris, advocates are making a strong push to get karate back in time for the 2028 Olympics that will take place on U.S. soil in Los Angeles.

Marsh takes tremendous pride in being from Alaska, representing the Last Frontier on the national stage and being a trailblazer for the state’s youth.

“I like to get people knowing what Alaska is all about,” she said. “We’re determined, we can win, and we’re out here.”