The club was founded in 1993 by Roger Spreadbury, Tony Brown and Jill Brown. Roger’s Wife Mary was treasurer, with Tony as chair, Jill secretary and Roger coaching.
Our original training sessions were held in the old Dining Hall, now demolished
at Court Lane Junior School with mats we begged and borrowed from other clubs and leisure centres.
In 1997, Tony and Jill passed their preliminary coach awards and in 1998 we were able to replace half our mat area with brand new Geemats.
The second half of the mat area was upgraded in 2003, with the smaller 1×1 metre mats.
Roger retired from the club in 2003.
Brett Caswell, Kev Jones and Tony Twining have all come up through the ranks to attain their coaching awards alongside Tony and Jill.
We have been lucky enough to attract guest coaches of the calibre of Kate Houghey MBE, John Buchanan, Sophie Cox, Neil Adams MBE and Nick Kossor.
The Club was awarded Sport England Clubmark and BJA Bronze Club Recognition in 2005.
The club has enjoyed much competition success producing several Hampshire champions, Southern Area representatives and Great Britain squad members. Brett Caswell has been the most successful player to date with 4 British and a Commonwealth title,
No player is under pressure to compete however, our primary focus being simply on teaching judo as a means of developing the individual physically and mentally, inline with Kano’s original philosophy of mutual benefit.
