The Hermiston School of Karates new sensei lined up the Little Tigers childrens class on the mat Thursday afternoon. He smiled at the group of 4- to 6-year-olds and said, Are you guys ready to go?

He was met with a volley of cheers from the diminutive class.

The sensei, Mike Franco, has 15 years of experience under his black belt as instructor at Trinity Martial Arts Academy in Richland, a school affiliated with Hermiston School of Karate. The two schools are members of the American Shudokan Association, a network of 26 martial arts dojos that teach traditional Okinawan karate in the Northwest.

When Franco heard the Hermiston dojo was at risk of closing after the former owners of Hermiston School of Karate, Kevin and Luann Horn, retired this summer after nearly 13 years of dedication to their dojo, he visited it to see if the school was worth reviving.

The students were just super excited. It was a place we didnt want to have shut down, Franco said.

Still, Franco feels the school will have to modernize some of its methods to be successful as a business.

One change will be splitting up the classes into manageable groups of students.

Students will now be grouped by belt color. The three main groups will be the beginner white belts, the intermediate yellow through purple belts and the advanced green and brown belts.

Another change to the dojo will be the soundtrack. In the past, the dojo was silent except for the sounds of Karate gis (uniforms) rustling and the occasional battle cry or kiai.

Now, Franco has added a set of speakers that play pump-up rock music for warm up time and a gentle background of taiko drums and flutes for serious training time.

In terms of class content, Franco said he plans to introduce board-breaking into the schools curriculum. In the future, green belts will be required to break a wooden board with their hand in order to advance to brown belt.

Franco made it clear belts are merely a ranking system to show improvement, not a status symbol.

Our goal is to teach simple, effective martial arts, he said. The belt is not the goal.