The club recognises that an aikido practitioner requires a constant dedication, patience, and persistence when practising the art in order to reach a 1st degree black belt (Shodan).

One must continuously explore, experiment, and evolve his/her aiki tecniques as well as the aiki mind and attitude on and off the matt. Reaching a 1st degree black belt is a milestone and at the same time a start to a journey of a more joyful and mature training.

These are the years when people passed their shodan (1st Dan; Black belt) tests:

1989 Opening of the UNSW Aikido club
1992 Anthony Davies
1994 Allen Iu, Petri Kurkaa, Stephen Hafer, Tony Gutierrez, Glen Davison
1997 Gregor Erdmann, Nandya Hermanto, Carlo Santos, Mark Vic, Jason Lim, Roger Pang
1999 Alan Soriano, David Matthews, David Yu,
2002 Adam Archer, James Khoo, Melissa Sommerville, Stuart Hill, Patrick Fong
2003 Angeline Fong
2004 Alex Chan, Stephen Herborn
2005 Dene Olding
2007 Billy Mok, Hermawan Halim, Kim Hickey, Yevgeny Khiefets
2008 Iven Sanchez
2009 Richard Gray
2010 Alexis Berthot, Morgan Derera
2011 Melissa Sim, William Hendarta
2012 Brian Chan, Evelyn Chan, Vidhya Sethu
2013 Radion Ingman, Tze Ling Loh
2014 June Andronick, Franz
2015 Kin Jin Ly, Theresia Hall
2016 Vincent Yeo
2018 Antonio Miranda, Stephane Velasque
2019 Chris Hall
2021 Raghavi B, Shantanu Chakraborty, Tony Nguyen, Dennis Bunadi
2023 Yumi Kobayashi