This term has seen another brilliant turnout from our incoming January freshers, with upwards of 60 new students coming down to give badminton a go during our taster sessions. For those who came down for the taster sessions, they can really give an insight into just how popular badminton club is at Buckingham. This large turnout at taster sessions translated into an equally large membership base which has been extremely active over the last few weeks since spots clubs resumed in January!
Club Shirts
By the time we came back from the winter break, the shirts we had ordered for our club members last year from Akuma had been delivered! They look fantastic and really give the club a more professional and exciting feeling. Seeing most of our members from last year walking around with their club badminton shirts has been a really proud moment for us as it has given us a sense of identity as a club. We can’t wait to hand out the rest of them to our returning members after their graduation ceremonies this March!
Tournament
This year, we decided to have another shot at what we hope will become an annual doubles badminton tournament. Expanding on last year’s format which was only open to club members, we doubled the number of teams and opened the tournament up to all members of the Buckingham Sports Union. It was amazing to see so many of our university sports clubs represented in the tournament, from the Cheerleading club to the new Cricket club, it was amazing to see everyone getting involved with it.
This year, we had 16 pairs enter the tournament with only approximately 14 players in the whole tournament who had played badminton regularly before. This gave the tournament a casual feel as well as a competitive aspect as it allowed people to come down and have a bit of fun whilst introducing competition into the badminton club, which is something we have been aiming to do for a while.
Our eventual winners were Aizaz and Akash, both of whom are not just badminton club members but also executives of the new cricket club at Buckingham. In a close final with Dylan and Aaron, they beat out the pair in a 21-14 thriller whilst Emerald and Richard beat Charmaine and Henry in the third place play offs. We also awarded a medal to a team which had surprised us in the tournament by performing better than we had expected, which we awarded to Elina from UoB Royals and Hannah from Buckingham Tornados for putting up a valiant fight during their highly competitive group stage.
From a President perspective, the tournament was extremely hectic, but it seemed that everyone had a great time and we look forward to doing it again. It was also fantastic to see how many people came to watch their friends play in the tournament, with around 25 people watching on from the viewing gallery during the tournament!
Future plans
We are hoping to expand on the competitive aspect of our badminton club by hopefully reintroducing our badminton weekend league which ran successfully during the winter term last year and we also plan to reach out to more local badminton clubs for potential friendly matches.
We have a social for the 8th of March currently in the works and we look forward to seeing as many of our members there as we can!
We are currently also looking at potentially hosting a party with another uni sports club so do keep an eye out for that!
If you are interested in joining badminton club, do feel free to email us with any questions you may have at 2106798@buckingham.ac.uk and follow the Badminton Instagram for regular club updates @Uniofbucksbadminton!
Aditya Bose- Mandal