Badminton Team Reaches All England Final
01 May 2009
On Saturday, 25th April, the U16 Badminton Squad, comprising of Martin Bullard (Captain), Edward Johnson, Tom Wintle, Sultan Hameed and Greg Langley played in the finals of the KS4 National Schools Championships at Center Parcs, Sherwood Forest.
This was the end of a long progression through borough, county and regional rounds. We played 5 matches (2 singles and 3 doubles) against each of the other schools in each round of the tournament. By the end of the tournament we had played 70 games in total.
We started with the Borough round at Langley School in December 2008. Solihull’s two boys teams came 1st and 2nd but only Solihull 1 were allowed to progress to the next round so Langley (as the highest placed state school) slipped through too.
The County round took place in January 2009 in Stratford. KES Stratford presented the toughest competition at this stage but we saw them off 3-2 to go through to the Regionals, representing Warwickshire. The girls U14 squad also won their first two rounds to take the County title.
As a reward for becoming County Champions, the Solihull squads were invited to watch the matches and have professional coaching at the All England Badminton Championships at the NIA.
The Regionals were in February in Stoke-on-Trent. We beat the Staffordshire and Black Country schools easily at 5-0, but had a real battle against Camp Hill representing Birmingham. With the match score tied at 2-2, the nail-biting decider went to 20-20 as the whole sports hall looked on, but a steely smash won the last point to make Solihull the West Midlands Regional Champions and get us through to the final round – one of only nine boys schools out of the entire country to do so.
Representing the school at the Nationals was an amazing experience. Other regional teams contained England and Gold Rated players, giving our squad the opportunity to compete at a truly elite level for the first time. The matches were very challenging and we started nervously, but we showed great determination and stamina, producing some of our best performances towards the end of the day.
After play finished, we were given the opportunity to talk to England player Antony Clark to hear about his career and get advice about how to progress in the game.
This national competition was run by Badminton England in partnership with Center Parcs. Out of over 15,000 participants – representing 1,000 schools – who entered the competition, we eventually came 8th.
We have been hugely lucky to have Mrs Brown as our coach, and we thank her for her enthusiastic support and commitment.
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