Badminton competition

May 21, 2006 by paul
Filed under: Uncategorized

Mark and I took part in a local badminton competition (held at the University of Toronto athletic centre) yesterday – my first competition in … well, a very, very long time! We entered in class C (as did most of the people from our club), despite a few suggestions that we should have gone in B.

The morning started with an open warm-up session from 8am-8:45am – way too early if you ask me, but it was our only chance before our first match. The morning round was a round-robin, where each team in our group (C2) played everyone else, but we only played to 11 points (and no setting) because of time constraints. We won our first game, which was a relief for us both. Unfortunately we beat ourselves in the second game, against a pair from Montreal – they were good, but I could feel myself tensing up when I missed shots … and tensing up meant I missed more shots, and so the downward spiral began. We pulled ourselves together before the end but it was too late to save that game. We did, however, win the other three games.

Kerri came down to watch in the afternoon. The organisers had spent their lunchtime working out the points differences from the morning’s games, and we were moved up to the C+ group. This time the games were to be played to 21, setting at 20 (to 1 or 3 points) as needed.

Our first game started off OK but we were feeling the effects of lunch and playing a lot more points, but we battled on. In the end we lost 19-21, and both us and the other team were exhausted. It meant that we were out of the running for a medal, which was a shame but not the end of the world. In the end we won the consolation game, or “kings of the losers” as Mark put it.

After a couple of pints, I headed home, showered, then we got a lift back downtown to meetup with everyone again for dinner at the Bright Pearl. The new committee were introduced (including me, as the webmaster) and then there were some presents (mostly sports bags) to say thank you to people involved in the event’s/club’s organisation. Out came the hardware – there were medals for the top three pairs in each of the six groups – and Mark & I got a consolation prize (tape for re-gripping racquets). Finally there were a few special awards, and I was very surprised when they announced that I’d been awarded the sportsmanship award! (I got a $20 gift card for SportChek [sic], so I’ll put it toward a jacket I’ve been thinking of getting.)

We finally rolled out of the restaurant about 10:30 – some of the others were heading off to a club, but I was tired and feeling creaky so we headed home. Kerri went running at some unearthly hour this morning so I was up by about 7:30 – I didn’t/don’t ache as much as I’d feared, but I certainly know I was in a competition. I decided to take a little nap about 1:45 this afternoon … and Kerri woke me about 7pm! It’s a good job we’ve got tomorrow off!