BY Lorenzo Todaro, Instructor and Rector in LudoSport Alpha Academy (Italy Milan)

"The first pupil"

"Next to place where I live there was a little comics shop in which I was used to buy my favourite comics. It was there, on May 2006, that I first notice a flyer on the counter saying “LudoSport – Light Saber Combat. Where reality meets imagination!" I’ve always been a great Star Wars fan, so I didn’t have second thoughts and immediately wrote an email asking when I could have tried the discipline. On May the 31st I entered the First “Cripta”. Nowadays it’s very difficult to explain what was LudoSport at that time: there were no uniforms, no structured techniques or manuals, not even Light Sabers suitable for fighting. But it was enough for the 17-years-old me. There was a project, a vision and it was ambitious and magnificent. There were six of us that night: the three Founding Masters, me and other two guys. I can’t recall very much about that specific lesson but two details. First, I remember my sword, a fragile and very expensive FX Master Replica, falling down and making a lot of noise while I was trying to perform a Rin for the first time; this caused somediscouragement and brought me to say “It doesn’t work!”, the first of many. The second detail I recall was the end of the lesson: an all vs. all fight in the dark, something that nowadays would drive every instructor crazy… There was still a lot of work to do! On the other side I perfectly recall the moment when I got home. I said to my mother “I’ve just found the sport of my life”. Now, after 14 years, I can definitely say I was right. The next Wednesday I came back alone to the Masters, and it took a month before other people joined the class. Honestly, I don’t know what the Founding Masters thought about their first and only pupil, a very shy 17-years-old boy that wasn’t even that good in handle the lightsaber. Nonetheless, I believed in them and LudoSport with all my heart and, I think, they slightly believed in me too."