SAMURAI Judo Club’s latest girls squad is already getting results and scooped another medals haul at the club’s open Orange & Under Championships, attended by players from over thirty different clubs as far away as Cardiff and London.

In the girls lower grade section, Megan Burford and Ida Chamberlain put in determined efforts to win bronzes, whilst Olivia Leung went one better to gain a silver. For all three, this was just their second competitive event. However, most of the attention in this section went on the light-middleweight section, where Sophia Rose was also competing in her second competition and won her second gold medal, but not before team-mate Poppy Bowman gave her a good run for her money. Poppy, in her first ever event, fought really hard and ended up with bronze.

In the girls higher grades, Sophia was allowed to compete here too and astonished many observers by defeating an orange belt in her first match. For somebody who only started judo just before last Christmas, that is quite an achievement, and she followed this up by scoring against another orange belt in her next contest and being just three seconds away from another win there before being caught by a late throw. She went on to win the bronze.

In the next girls weight category, Katy Jennings was working really well and produced one of the best throws of the day to book a semi-final place against her friend and training colleague Sophie Davis, who was also having a good day. Sophie tends to beat Katy in competition and the same result happened today, but not before Katy gave her a good battle. Katy went on to win the bronze, whilst Sophie looked comfortable in the final until she made a mistake on the ground and had to settle for silver.

Samurai fielded two Maddisons in the girls open weight category. Both Maddi Haywood and Maddi Averill came up against some much heavier girls but showed good skill in beating them all and ended up meeting in the final. This was a close match but Maddi Averill eventually edged it to give the Samurai club gold and silver.

In the boys lower grades, Lathan Spackman, like Sophia Rose, had won gold at his last competition in March and was hoping to do the same again, and again like Sophia achieved his target, winning the gold medal comfortably. Nick Deeley, just turned eight years of age, was competing for the first time and clearly enjoying himself and gained a bronze with a good performance, whilst Edward Martin brought up the hat-trick of medals for the boys lower grades with another bronze. In the boys higher grades, Jordan Phillips added yet another gold medal to his growing tally with ease, whilst there were bronzes for Luke Phillips, Harrison Flello, Mateo Allen and Luke Jahromi.

For details about starting judo, telephone 0776 1122977 or visit the Samurai website on www.samurai.org.uk or their Facebook page.