The Amersham 61 Youth Club was founded in 1961 operating out of the Royal British Legion Hall in Amersham. Two years later in 1963 the youth club opened a subsidiary, the 61 Judo Club, with Don Elliot as our coach. Making us one of the oldest judo clubs in Buckinghamshire.

Don ran the club for 10 years before handing over to Dave Bassein in 1973. The club ran sessions on Wednesdays at the Royal British Legion Hall until the mid-1970’s when the youth club and judo club moved to new premises in School Lane, Old Amersham.

In 1975 Dave passed the coaching role to Peter and Gina Edwards. They ran the club until their retirement in October 1985 when they emigrated to New Zealand. They, in turn, handed over the reins to Paul Jordan, then a 22 year old brown belt. Paul is now a 6^th Dan and still running the club, forty years and counting.

In 1994 Paul persuaded Cathy Darvell to get on the matt. Two years later she obtained her 1^st Dan and became a qualified coach. Cathy left in August 2002 and was replaced in September 2002 by Dean Jordan, Paul’s son. Between 2004 and 2006 the club was also supported by experienced coaches Ron Cleere , from Stockenchurch Judo Club, and Kim Tilley, from Reading Judo Club.

In 2007 the club membership started to surge leading to a membership of between 130 to 150 players. This created the good problem of how to manage such a large club. Although the judo club was expanding the youth club section was declining, this left the hall available on Friday evening so a Friday night session was started mainly run by Dean.

The 61 Judo club started a reign of success producing multiple national and international Juniors (17 to 19 year olds), Cadets (14 -17 year olds) and pre-cadets (12-14 year olds). During this period, we also increased our coaching team to include Caroline Kinnane, an international player, Terry Kinnane, Steve Moore and Dan Harris.

In 2010 we decided to increase the number of sessions being offered so that we could support our growing number of competition players. So, we opened a new session on Monday nights. Due to the limited space at our location in School Lane we held these sessions in the nearby Royal British Legion Hall on Whielden Street, Old Amersham. We also started running development sessions on Saturday morning for the younger players and technical sessions for the senior sessions on Saturday afternoons. We were now running 8 sessions a week on 4 different days.

In 2014 we had a major setback when the Amersham Town Council decided to withdraw the lease, we had held for about 40 years, on the School Lane premises forcing us to relocate. It took some time to find new premises and as a result we lost a large number of players but still had a club of about 80 members. New premises were found at The Amersham School on Stanley Hill. However due to financial pressures another move was forced on us in 2017 moving to the Chesham Cricket Club.

At the Chesham Cricket Club, we were still running 3 nights a week. It was during this time that we added Jenny Smith as a coach, she is also our Club Secretary. However, the location was not the best for the club and we started to lose players. So, we decided to return to the Royal British Legion Hall in Old Amersham in 2020. However, the hall was only available on Mondays and Fridays so the number of nights for practice was decreased.

As the club was beginning to recover numbers COVID struck forcing the club to close for most of 2020. Once it was safe to re-open we had to start rebuilding the club numbers. At this point we had fallen to a membership of about 30 players.

Over the next 4 years the club grew in numbers and we recruited Tom Lind and Kevin Hazel as new coaches. However, we were faced with a number of closures due to the state of the Royal British Legion Hall. The building was finally condemned in February 2025, forcing another relocation.

In February 2025, we moved to the Coleshill Village Hall in Coleshill Amersham. This wonderful new location has allowed us to start rebuilding our club base with sessions on Mondays and Fridays. With a strong coaching team in Paul, Jenny, Tom and Kevin and a growing number of members, we are looking forward to a bright future at Coleshill Village Hall and breathing new life back into this 62 year old Judo Club.