Gorleston Club Hosts Norfolk Open Sombo Championships

On Saturday the 21 st May, the Norfolk Sombo Association , hosted its first "Open" Sombo competition at the Nile Road Centre, Gorleston. The event was co-hosted by the O Yama Ryu Goshin Jitsu Club. The students from the Norfolk Sombo Association were visited by the Sittingbourne Warriors club and a fantastic day's competition was had by all who competed. There were spectators at this competition from several other established Sombo wrestling clubs from Folkestone, Sittingbourne Cambridge and Essex.

The following medals were awarded to the following students :-

Group A - Junior Boys 1 - Gold - Harry Anderson (W),

Silver - Ben Franks (W) , Bronze - Keiran Allen (W)

Group B - Junior Mixed Group- Gold - Rowan Cullen (W),

Silver - Liam Allen (W) , Bronze - Niamh Finlay (W)

Group C - Junior Girls 1 - Gold - Niamh Finlay (W)

Silver - Rowan Cullen (W) , Bronze - Sabrina Chant (NSA)

Group D - Junior Boys 2 - Gold - Ashley Jordan (W),

Silver - Ethan Wright (NSA) , Bronze - Connor Wright (NSA) ,

Group E - Youth Girls U53 kg- Gold - Martine Clark (NSA),

Silver - Stacey Branchett (W) , Bronze - Daniela Balls (NSA)

Group F - Youth Girls U73 kg- Gold - Martine Clark (NSA),

Silver - Samantha Clayton (NSA) , Bronze - Alyx Costa (W)

Group G - Youth Boys 1 - U65 kg- Gold - Sam Lawson (NSA),

Silver - Spencer Evans-Webster (NSA) , Bronze - Jamie Marzetti (W)

Group H - Youth Boys 2 - U65 kg- Gold - Jamie Marzetti (W)

Silver - Brett Parsons (NSA) , Bronze - Daniel Storer (NSA),

Group I - Senior Open Group 1 - Light Weight - Gold - Ashley Costa (W)

Silver - Robert Brown (NSA) , Bronze - Steve Bennett (W),

Group J - Senior Open Group 2 - Heavy Weight - Gold - Bob Wright (W)

Silver - Ben Lawson (NSA) , Bronze - Oliver Garwood (NSA),

Key to clubs (W) Warriors Sittingbourne (NSA) Norfolk Sombo Asoc..

The Norfolk Sombo clubs head coach Graham Mann, would like to congratulate all who took part in this competition, especially those who were new to the sport, but were willing to have a go. We should be attending a couple more competitions soon and this has been a good advert for the sport and hopefully some more students will now be interested in "having a go" and trying out the sport. And after the excellent days competition, we will definitely be staging this event again next year.

Graham would like to thank National Coach's Tim Thomas and Steve Sweetlove for all their assistance in officiating at the event, and Keith Costa, for bringing the party from Sittingbourne up for the event. The competition was held under "Sombo UK " rules.

One surprise appearance was by the British Sombo Federation Senior coach , Martin Clarke, who said that he was very impressed by the way some of the Norfolk youngsters competed and fought hard for every point .

Sombo wrestling is a style of Jacket wrestling, from Russia , similar in style to Freestyle and Olympic wrestling and several other martial arts, including Judo and Brazilian Jui Jitsu. The sport involves both throwing and ground work and a version of the sport was developed by the Russian army as their version of self defence, which is where the name Sombo comes from.