The love of sports connects people from all around the world. Families pass down favorite teams, favorite players and favorite memories from one generation to the next.

For Nathan Makino, kendo was one of the many things that his father passed down to him which they bonded over. With the encouragement of his father, Makino began practicing the art of kendo at the age of 12 and looked to continue the discipline when he was an undergraduate student at UCLA.

However, this proved more difficult than expected because during his undergraduate years in the early to mid 2000's, UCLA Kendo had not yet been established. Because kendo played a large role in his childhood as well as helping him develop into a more well-rounded individual, sought out others to create this club. During his freshmen year, Makino, along with four other students and his father as the coach, brought UCLA Kendo to life.

"In my freshmen year, I founded the club and on campus, there were four other guys who had some kendo experience. We didn't know each other prior to attending UCLA, however." said Makino "We learned about an intercollegiate competition at Harvard University, so we decided to join together to make a team to go compete. My father was the first coach of the program, and was the one who trained us. In the end, we actually won the championship and that really put UCLA Kendo on the map in 2004."

After the success of this newly found club, Makino still faced an uphill battle in order to gain campus wide recognition for the UCLA Kendo Club. Luckily, stars aligned for Makino as their performance at the Harvard competition was able to grab the attention of the administration who could see that the club had the potential and should be afforded proper space to train. In addition, around the same time as the club was starting to gain steam, The Last Samurai was being released in the theatres which helped inspire new participants to come out for the club.

"When we opened up the kendo club, we had over 100 people show up and we did not know what to do. Honestly, it was a good problem to have." said Makino "One challenge that we faced was that there  was a lot of demand for this and people want to learn about the discipline. We only had five students to lead the club, and for the next two years it was a challenge for me and the other four to lay the groundwork for a functioning club."

For those of you who are unfamiliar with kendo, it can be broken down into two different aspects: the concept of the discipline and the visual or service level that the outside world gets to see.

"The concept of kendo is to discipline the human character through the application of the principles of the catana or the sword. Kendo is kind of like swordsmanship, because it is like Japanese fencing if you will. It is the way of the warrior as it has historical elements that come from military and that kind of hierarchy." said Makino "On the surface level, it is Japanese fencing in that we have these sticks that represent the sword and we have target areas we have to strike for points."

Makino's amazing ability to multi-task as an undergraduate student proved to be successful as the Kendo Club is entering their 13th year here at this institution while boasting 5 national championships.

Today, the club is indeed a lot more structured and is more expansive in terms of coaching staff and hierarchy. In addition to Makino, who is the head coach, the UCLA Kendo club's assistant coaches are Joe Yang, Daisuke Furukawa and Leslie Kuwabara. As far as student leadership goes, Hwoyoung Choi and Hiromi Miyawaki are the men's and women's captains, respectively, while Jenny Chim and Vicki Lau are the President and Vice-President.