Shuttlemark Silver Award for outstanding community club Dundee Nomads Badminton Club

Badminton Scotland are delighted to announce Dundee Nomads Badminton Club have become the 12^th club in Scotland to achieve the Silver Award as part of the Badminton Scotland Shuttlemark Accreditation Scheme.

The club, one of Dundee’s oldest has been around since the 1950’s as Dundee YMCA and Nomads, with a variety of homes across the city. The last few years have seen stability, with homes for both clubs at Ward Road Gym and Craigowl Primary School. This has allowed the committee to advertise the club, with membership increasing each season prior to Covid.

The success of the junior club membership drive has also seen the introduction of a “tiny tots” session.

Steve Cummings, the club coach explains: “Nomads has always been a friendly club, making badminton accessible to all. However, membership diminished to the point that we had a junior membership of only around 20 children before we moved to Craigowl. Having the permanent home allowed us to promote the club through attendance at schools events, a Facebook campaign and encouraging friends and family to come along. Our remit is always to allow play in both a competitive and social environment. We have a policy of involvement and encourage the older youngsters to help out with junior coaching and have forged links with schools offering Duke of Edinburgh schemes. Participants come along to fulfil not only the physical element of the scheme but can also help coaching as part of the service element.”

Steve continued “We really are indebted to all of our helpers at the club. Not only the committee but also the volunteer coaches who make the junior club such fun on a Friday. We also need to acknowledge the support and help from our Badminton Scotland RDO who has championed our cause.

By completing first the Bronze and now the Silver Shuttlemark Accreditation Award it helped the club focus on ways to increase membership, improve facilities and finances and utilise social media to promote the club. The planning documents provide useful timescales and helps keep the club on track.

The next steps are to develop the club further – more coaches trained and bring more children through to the adult club and teams. The future is bright for Nomads.

Current Scottish Senior National Squad member and Women’s Singles player Lauren Middleton, grew up playing at the club:  ‘‘From my time at Dundee Nomads I would describe the club as a great community club with a friendly  and welcoming atmosphere. My family have been involved with the club, its where I started to play at around 8 years old along with my siblings.  My dad also helped coach at the club.  It is great to see the club achieving Shuttlemark Silver Award – this a real credit to the coaches & volunteers who are involved in continuing to make the club such a success’’

The aim of Shuttlemark is to help support clubs reflect on current practice and use the programme to further identify areas that may require improvement or need to be addressed. Further to this, our aim is to ensure that junior badminton clubs in particular are safe and welcoming environments for people in the community to participate in badminton.

Well done Dundee Nomads Badminton Club, keep up the good work and we will be back to present your Gold award very soon!

For more information on Dundee Nomads Badminton Club, click here.

To find out more about Shuttlemark, click here.