What a difference a year makes in Judo. At last year’s Devon County Championships in Kingsbridge. Kingsley didn’t have enough fighters to enter the Inter-Club team event and only won 2 Gold medals from six competitors. At this year’s event we entered an enthusiastic team of 13 fighters and had enough Judoka to enter the team event. But most pleasing of all was winning a total of 22 medals with 7 individual Gold medal champions.
In the team tournament Kingsley was just one fighter short of a full nine man team. The team performed very well as many of the young light weights where competing for the very first time. We ended the competition in 3rd place after beating Totnes club Ronin Do by 6 wins to 3 to secure the Bronze medal.
In the individual competition our Judoka really stepped up a level and produced some marvellous results by wining 7 Gold medals and County Championships titles.
Kingsley School’s Joe Hillyer -34kg, Finlay Mathers – 38kg and Louis Hughes -46kg all in the under 12 age class put together a dazzling performance of skilful attacking judo to remain unbeaten all day to win their weight division. In fact Finlay retains his title as he won last year’s event.
Denver Butterworth performed possibly the best counter throw of the day against South Brent’s Adam Whitfield to win Gold in the -38kg in the under 16 age class. Fellow club mate Jacob Ward returned to Judo after a two year lay-off to also win Bronze medal in the same weight category.
Joseph Wickett also won Gold in the heavyweight category while Michael Edwards won Gold with six Ippon wins in the -66kg class also in the under 16 age group.
A much improved Oliver Mather’s won three bouts all by Ippon to win his first County title in the u60kg class, Elliot Sutcliffe -55kg who was fighting in his first ever competition, never let the stress get the better of him to win a well – deserved Silver medal. And Chris Edwards took a bronze medal in the -50kg class in the under 16 age band.
Bronze medals were also won in the under 12 age class by newcomers Felicity Barkley -26kg, Louie Mather’s -27kg and Oliver Stacey -30kg. All three young Judoka competed well and won some bouts which helped them to win their first ever medals.
Kingsley Coach Simon Ward says “I’m extremely proud of all the team’s efforts. They produced some great attacking Judo skills; we had some very encouraging performances from our newer fighters and confident mature technical performances from our older squad fighters”.