Anglia Ruskin University has awarded scholarships worth £1000 five judo players and bursaries worth £500 to a further two judo players.

All of the judo players who were awarded scholarships and bursaries will be expected to compete for Anglia Ruskin at the up and coming British University and Colleges Championships (BUCS) on Saturday 17 and Sunday 18 March.

Scholarships are given in cash but students are expected to spend the money of training, travel and competitions. The majority of the team travel and compete a lot. The university gave out around 20 scholarships across various sports this year.

Anglia Ruskin will be taking their biggest team yet to the university championships with 14 players, head coach Bob Challis said “it is great to have a much larger team, it means we have more depth and flexibility in selecting the mens team but we should remain focussed, more numbers doesn’t always mean better results.”

Last year Anglia Ruskin won the mens team event, this end the University of Bath’s 8 year reign at the top of university judo. Bob Challis said: “We were very happy to win the mens team championships last year, I think it is good for university judo as people were stating to expect Bath to win, in my opinion it is also good for Bath in many ways.”

However, this year the team loses it’s strongest player, Danny Williams, who will be in Japan as part of the British team’s Olympic preparations.

Bob Challis said: “Of course losing Danny is a blow to the team but he is still in the number one slot for an Olympic place to fight in London, of course that is more important, we’ll just have to see what happens this year but I can confirm the players are training hard and don’t like to lose.”

Anglia Ruskin will be announcing their BUCS team in early March.