POWERFUL junior pair Darcie Hancocks and Leah Grosvenor continued Samurai’s proud tradition of being a rounded club, where even the top competitors are also skilled in other areas of judo.

The pair currently top the medals table for contest judo so far this year, and both are also high standard junior referees.

They are also perhaps the best kata pair – the traditional form of display of judo moves – to emerge since Kate and Tom Walker many years ago.

Last weekend, they took time off from training for the British Championships in contest judo to enter the British Kata Championships.

Hancocks is one of only two players in Britain – the other is Tom Walker – to ever hold the British titles in both contest judo and kata, and last year the girls comfortably won the British Championships in the kata of throws.

This year, they had moved into the older age band, so the competition was tougher.

They reached the final, where they were up against a good pair from St. Albans.

The duo’s throws were better than their rivals, but the links and technical display points were not so good, so they were edged out into the silver medal, with 153 points against their opponents’ 159.

In the groundwork kata, they swapped around, with Grosvenor taking the lead instead of her team mate.

They produced a polished groundwork display, which looked superior in skill and judo quality to their main rivals from Leicestershire, but the judges decided that the positioning of the other girls was better and as a result, Darcie and Leah had to settle for silver once again.