Waterloo Judo Club

BBOTD this little dude. He's come a long way from his beginnings on the mat.....Lucas!!

Super well done to Kendall and Ezra for their medals and performances at the Wirral comp last weekend. Kendall also won a trophy for player of her group! Keep it up kids 😁👏🏼🥋🏆

Well done to big Tom for winning Thursday's black belt of the day! He did a great job helping us coaches! 🥋👏🏼

Congratulations to Billy earning his 6th dan

Fully deserved.

Thank you to all those that helped with the application and all those that turned up to make it a special night

Billy started judo in the 60’s, when the world was in black and white and there were only 2 TV channels and my nan had to hand wash his judo suits!!

His coach was Dave Molyneux an excellent technical judo player and became addicted to the sport.

He moved to train at the Liverpool YMCA where he met his long suffering judo widower, my mum, at judo. Appropriately telling her he would throw her if she didn’t agree on a date with him

Training 4 days a week (as a compromise from his previous 6 days) he progressed to competitive 3rd dan in 1976 before injuries to his infamous knees thwarted his competition days.

He continued in judo in the role of coach with support from friends Bobby MacClean and Les Williams and produced a number of NW area players and dan grades. He supported World Champion, Ann Hughes to her first international gold medal at the USA open

Success continued with Pat MacDonald becoming a junior international and Kevin Lynch and Steve Chadwick making the Senior British Squad.

The Club was so strong, one practice had 21 black belts on the mat and only 3 mon/kyu grades
We even ran our own team competition as we had too many dan grades to put teams into local comps

The 80’s saw the junior practice strengthen with the pinnacle being Chris Johnson winning the National Championships, Ian Johnson taking bronze in the Scottish Open and 5 players representing the NW area at the Nationals in one year.

On top of this Billy started to teach at the blind school with one of the players Terry Powell progressing so much he represented GBR, taking medals in 2 Paralympics.

The YMCA closed in 1989 and we joined Waterloo Judo club. It didn’t take long for the Club to have similar success with Me, Tracy Adams, Ian Bruce, Peter Lomax, Jamie Ray, Seb Morgan Green and Jade Williams all taking National Medals and earning a place on the GBR junior squad.

The success has continued even up to date, with further National Medals with Luke Jackson and multiple home country titles and European contests for Beth Chemicals. Our latest batch includes Chloe the Nerd taking medals in the British School Championships in 2024 and 2025.

This input to judo and continued diligence in the role of a coach has been over 60 years

The role call above is:
1 World Champion supported
1 Paralympic medallist

3 Full Senior international
10 junior internationals (two who went on to full international as full time players)

Well done to last night's black belt of the day Nathaniel! 🥋💪

Well done to Kendal for being our black belt of the day on Thursday! 🥋💪

Well done to yesterday's black belt of the day Lucas!👏 Lovely to see how much it meant to him! ☺️🥋

Every Mon and Thur
6.30pm to 8pm for Kids £5 Seniors 8pm to 9.35pm £7