THE youngest team of competitors from Kendal Judo Club to take part in an international competition have returned from Sweden with two silver medals, a bronze and bags of experience.

The club entered the The Budo Nord Cup in Lund which is one of the biggest Scandinavian judo competitions of the year with more than 600 entries from all over Europe taking part.

Mike Liptrot, the club's head coach, was delighted with the performance of his young squad and not just the medal winners.

Poppy Howe, at just 31 kilos, was the lightest player in the Kendal squad. So light that there was nobody else in her weight group and she had to fight up a weight.

In the final, she met the Spanish number one player in her weight. Despite giving away over 8 kilos (over a stone) in weight Poppy made her opponent work really hard before succumbing to a hip throw and the resulting silver medal.

Nye Greasley was in the Under 38 kilo weight group. He had a very close first contest with the result going to a referee’s decision on the Kendal player’s side.

His next contest had Nye throwing his Swedish opponent for the full point about halfway through the fight to reach the final against the Swedish number one and was caught with a counter throw but it was a second silver medal for Kendal. On the other side of the knockout, Ben Howe narrowly lost his bronze medal fight and had to be satisfied with an excellent fifth place.

Daisy Schwarzer was Kendal’s third medallist.

She lost in the semi-final to the eventual Swedish gold medallist and had to fight really hard in the contest for the bronze medal eventually catching her opponent with an inner reaping throw to secure the medal.

In the opposite side of the knockout, Lauren Fox also got to the bronze medal fight but was unable to overcome a scoring technique by her opponent halfway through the contest but another fifth place was building up an excellent tally for the Kendal players.

Robbie Kincart's fifth place raised Kendal’s position up the results table even further as did the efforts of Finley Webb, Nathan O’Sullivan, Matilda Hall, Joe Plenderleith and Bradley Hammond.