It is amazing how young athletes are made.

Aviya Aaron became a champ because she was ill.

Aviya, 12 years old and a sixth grader at Fuchs Mizrachi School in Beachwood, was born 13 weeks premature, weighing 2 pounds, 5 ounces and suffered from weakness in her upper and lower limbs in the left side of her body. At 3 years old, Aviya’s parents, Ksenia and Sagiv Aaron, steered their daughter to learn karate when the family was living in Palo Alto, Calif., as a way to develop her muscles. Three years later, Aviya was mastering kicks and blocks.

“She has what was like cerebral palsy,” Sagiv Aaron told the Cleveland Jewish News. “Then her weakness disappeared, and now she is a pretty strong child. She really works on her balance and strength. You would never believe that she had any type of issue.”

Why karate in particular?

“It uses each side of the body very equally, so when you focus on one side of the body, you equally focus on the other side,” Ksenia Aaron told the CJN. “It trains your whole body to be equally strong.”

Aviya said she likes the sport because “You get to learn how to defend yourself and in life, it’s how you need to use what you learn against an opponent.”

As her training progressed, not only did Aviya’s body get stronger, she began to do exceptionally well in competitions.

At age 6, she competed at the World Budo Karate Championship in the Czech Republic, a world championship for children competing in traditional karate. In May, she won the kata championship at the U.S. Budo National Tournament in Phoenix. Kata means being in a karate competition that can either be an individual or team of three events.

“It was really cool,” Aviya said of the significant win. “Amazing.”

Aviya’s coach, Larry Rothenberg of the Cleveland Shotokan Karate Club, has been amazed at Aviya’s progress since the Aaron family moved to the Cleveland area three years ago.

“She’s very determined and very coachable,” Rothenberg said. “She’s very, very dedicated.”

Aviya’s success has rubbed off on the rest of the family. Aviya’s brother Amichai, 8, has a purple belt. The third grader at Fuchs placed third in kata and third in sparring at the Phoenix event. He and Aviya combined to place second in the team kata competition.

For 10-year-old brown belt Aviya Aaron, karate started out as a form of therapy to overcome a weakness in her left side, but then she became passionate about her training to a point where she has competed on the world stage.

Last year, when her family moved to Beachwood, Aviya and her mother, Dr. Ksenia Aaron, began training with the Cleveland Shotokan Karate Club run by Larry Rothenberg at Heights Jewish Center Synagogue in University Heights.

“Aviya is very determined and focused and diligent in her training,” Rothenberg, a board member of Beachwood Kehilla, told the Cleveland Jewish News. “She’s very curious and eager to learn. She’s very respectful, and she has a joyful nature that lifts the class, and she’s always thinking beyond what is being taught for other applications and a deeper meaning to the techniques.”

Born 13 weeks premature in Valhalla, N.Y., Aviya weighed 2 pounds, 5 ounces and went through extensive physical, occupational and speech therapy as a young child. At 3-years-old, she began training in Shotokan Karate in Los Angeles under the mentorship of sensei Avi Rokah and sensei Ruth Rokah as karate uses every part of your body, her mother said.