SAMURAI Judo Club members are celebrating after another successful weekend for both their players and referees.

On Saturday, they held their annual remembrance event for Bev Price, the Bev Team Championships, widely considered the premier British club team competition, at the British Judo Centre of Excellence at Walsall.

For once, there were only a few teams entered from Samurai itself, but the boys heavyweight team of Jake Ashen, Jack Walker and Lucas Kent did particularly well and the men’s team of Sam Woodward, Sam Bravo and Dan Matei also claimed some good scalps on their way to a fifth place.

As ever, Olivia Turner was in the thick of the action. She was guesting for Crawley club Kin Ryu in their junior team and won the bronze with some excellent judo, but then also fought with the Kin Ryu senior women’s team and put in an astonishing performance, defeating two black belts, one of them a second level black belt who she beat by maximum points to gain her first points towards her own black belt, and the other black belt a very good player who she had never previously beaten before.

Samurai had three of their referees under assessment for their next level of qualification. Rob Alloway narrowly missed out, but Laura Dangerfield added to her long list of qualifications by gaining her National ‘C’ Level award.

However, the outstanding performance came from Sophie Deeming-Lane who was cool, superbly confident and giving all the right decisions. She qualified as an Area Referee, making her a senior referee at just fifteen years of age, and the assessors said they would have skipped that grade and put her straight up to the next level – something very rarely done – if she had been old enough to qualify.

With Samurai having their two international referees, Stefan Newbury and Archi Shrimpton, both selected for the Glasgow European Cup next weekend, the club has yet more talent coming through their refereeing system, which is unmatched in Britain.

On Sunday, the second day of the Walsall competitions was the Samurai Senior High Grades and Masters Open, and event only for the higher grades. Three excellent wins and another twenty points towards her black belt, making 70 now out of the 100 she needs even though she has only been a brown belt for a couple of months, Hetty Tinsdale was in good form, losing just once against a much heavier girl to take the silver.

In the women’s higher grades, Laura Dangerfield and Sarah Jane Newbury were both competing.

Along with Kate Walker, these two are Worcestershire’s highest graded females ever, both third level blacks. Unfortunately Sarah tweaked an old knee injury and had to withdraw during her first contest, actually with Laura, but Laura went on to win three matches, gaining another ten points towards her fourth level black belt and taking the silver medal.

In the senior men, Lewis Mills was having a good go, winning three contests, all by maximum points to take the bronze medal and leaving him on 97 points, just three points short of his black belt.

Meanwhile in the masters section, sixth level black belt Paul Moss took a bronze and second level black belt Rob Alloway finished just outside the medals in fifth place.

On the same day, Olivia Turner travelled down to the Hampshire Open, along with Luke Mole. Luke did well to win bronze in the juniors, whilst Olivia stormed to gold in the juniors with four wins out of four and then for good measure entered the seniors as well, winning three contests to reach the final and then only narrowly losing to a black belt in the final by two minor penalties to one and taking the silver medal to make it four medals for her in a single weekend.