Lanarkshire Badminton Group host first ever Grade C Bonanza!
By Lanarkshire Badminton
The Lanarkshire Badminton Group (LBG) on Saturday hosted their first ever Bonanza Grade C tournament. The 3 events which involved Men’s Doubles, Women’s Doubles and Mixed Doubles were made up of 34 entries attracting players from all across Scotland including local to Lanarkshire and surrounding areas such as Glasgow, Renfrewshire, Fife and Edinburgh.
With a smaller than anticipated entry the venue hire booking at Wishaw Sports Centre was reduced down to 3 courts, however this did not effect what was an exciting atmosphere with plenty of close matches throughout the course of the day.
It was the opening round of the Men’s Doubles Group A that got the competition underway. This involved a three set battle between Jack Crawford & Ewan Jenks and Louie Hunt & Arthur La Rooij with Hunt/La Rooij taking the match 15-21, 21-17, 21-15. Although it was the 48 minute record match between Breslin/Pamidimarry & Katamreddy/Oo which provided a thrilling decider for 3rd and 4th place. It was a convincing run for the number 1 seeds Keegan Friel & Greg Gillan who won all the group games. They would then face young duo Johnathan Paris & Cian Mullen in the Final where Paris/Mullen managed to overcome Friel/Gillan 21-12, 21-10.
In the Women’s Doubles, 4 pairs took part. It was Mother & Daughter partnership of Shona & Val Brown who played first match of the group against Alisha Rae & Katie Wright with the Brown partnership victorious with a 21-9, 21-17 win. The next match within this group was Ella Haime & Carla-Louise MacKenzie versus Betty Lau & Amanda Li. The Haime/MacKenzie pairing won 21-5, 21-10 going on to top the group and securing 1st place.
In the afternoon the Mixed Doubles took place with many players had already participated in the level doubles’ events in the morning. The format included one pool of six pairings which ensured plenty of game time for everyone. In Round 1, Mackenzie/Cunningham played Bickett/Wright winning 21-12, 21-11. This was followed by a 39 minute tie between Rashid/Simpson and Friel/Hodge which led to 3 sets and Rashid/Simpson edging the third set 23-21 over their opponents. This was only set dropped by the pairing who won 10 sets across 5 matches, going on to take 1st place.
Frank Turnbull our Tournament Convenor and interim Chair of Badminton Scotland stated:
‘‘As chair of Badminton Scotland, the reason we staged the tournament was to providing additional opportunities to non-regular tournament players as well as provide a ranking competition for players locally and nationally. This ties in with our strategy to expand the number of players competing at this level by providing additional opportunities like this as part of a wider tournament calendar. It was very pleasing to see some competitive matches throughout and the day overall was a success. Within my role at LBG, we are keen to run similar events in the future and aim to attract a big entry for next time’’
Again big thanks to our committee who organised the event which includes the team of Frank Turnbull, Jill Smith and Pam Casey.