In 1993, Sensei Durkin pulled from his teen ranks two new black belts (Sean Begley and Zachary Stark) and two senior brown belts (Liam Paul and Marcus Traynor) and invited them to a new program.

Within a few years the team of four grew to well past twenty advanced Junior students dedicated to advancing their understanding of Uechiryu and assisting others through journey towards black belt excellence.

Since the success of S.T.O.R.M. at Buzz Durkin’s Karate School, other dojos in the Butokukai have begun their own teams.  Today, the program has grown to well over a hundred active members within the Uechiryu Butokukai.

The acronym S.T.O.R.M. stands for Special Team Of Role Models.

Since its inception, the members of S.T.O.R.M. have been providing great role models for junior students. In their basic role, they assist in junior and teen classes on a weekly basis.

However, members S.T.O.R.M. have been an instrumental tool to the past twenty years of dojo and Association events. These include dojo events like Kyu Testings and Kick-A-Thons, and association events like Black Belt Testing, Intramurals and Graduation ceremonies - just to name a few. In 1999, they were responsible for bringing Kanmei Uechi to UechiFest, which, at the time, was the largest gathering of American Uechi Masters.