Nottinghamshire Schools Badminton Association
Nottinghamshire Schools Badminton Association
Chairman's
Report - Autumn 2005
All three squads have started very strongly during the current season. The U13, U15 and U17’s have won all of their regional shires league fixtures so far this season and all three squads have already qualified for their national team challenge finals shortly after Easter. A very solid start.
Training is going well at our three cell locations at Chilwell, The Manor in Mansfield and Worksop Leisure Centre.
Perhaps the highlight of the season has been the establishment of the Nottinghamshire Schools Badminton Association Elite Cells which now meet every week on a Wednesday evening at the Manor School complex in Mansfield. We have effectively taken control of the cells from Badminton England and are focussing solely upon the needs of Nottinghamshire based players. A great team atmosphere is being created and the results are already coming through.
Interestingly we have perhaps the best U13 squad that we have had for many years. We have effectively eight boys and eight girls who are all playing at National level. The girls are particularly strong with at least five of them currently standing in their Top 10 National rankings for their individual age groups. All very exciting.
Individually there have been some notable successes. We had three players taking part for England in perhaps the biggest European tournament of the season so far at the Danish Cup in Copenhagen in October. All three returned with Gold Medals. Ruth Coleman of Carlton-Le-Willows school and Peter Mills from Southwell Minster won a team Gold medal in U19 event. Christopher Adcock back from a serious leg injury that occurred a year ago, picked up a Team Gold in U17 event and then did extremely well to win two individual Gold’s in the Men’s Doubles and Mixed Doubles Event. A fantastic achievement.
We still have seven squad members on a much reduced National World Class Programme and expect several of our younger players to join the scheme later this season.
We are now planning our two annual residential weekends that take place at Lea Green near Matlock in Derbyshire in January and February. These are always a highlight of the year for all squad members.
As Easter approaches, we will be training hard and planning for both the National Team Challenge Finals which will take place in Luton in early April and of course the ICT for the U17 squad that takes place at Easter. Shortly there after, assuming that we continue to do well on a regional basis, each age group we will be looking towards the National Shires League Finals in Leicester.
Individually, the National Championships take place during the next three months and we are optimistic that Nottinghamshire will once again achieve several medals.
Overall, Schools Badminton in Nottinghamshire remains vibrant and it is great to report that we now have a Schools League across the County up and running. Wonderful news.
I hope that I will have some major successes to share with you when we next report.
Paul Adcock - Chairman of NSBA