FOLLOWING in her family's fox-trotting footsteps, schoolgirl Jessica Hutchinson has scooped a national ballroom dancing award.

Two steps and tangos are not usually at the forefront of a nine-year-old girl's mind, but Jessica has proved she can show adults a thing or two when it comes to ballroom dancing.

Last weekend Jessica, from Middridge, Shildon, beat off competition from across the country to win the International Dance Teachers' Association championships, held in Blackpool's Winter Gardens ballroom.

The Heighington Primary School pupil won the Nationwide Medalist of the Year in the contest's under-12s category with the help of her mother Jackie, who partners her daughter for competitions.

The two practice their steps in a community hall and Jessica receives a couple of hours tuition a week at Hillier Dance School in West Rainton, near Durham.

Jackie said: "We want a little boy to partner her, but they're few and far between.

"She's just won a sequence dancing competition which has qualified her to dance at Blackpool again in a sequence contest. But ballroom is her favourite."

Jessica began dancing at two-years-old and by the time she was five had notched up a number of awards in ballroom, sequence and Latin American dancing.

Jessica's grandmother Mavis Wells is also a competition winner and has also partnered her granddaughter in a number of contests.