South Island Badminton Cup

By Mike South | Posted: Wednesday June 21, 2023

During last weekend, the South Island Badminton Cup was competed for over Saturday and Sunday at Badminton Hall here in Dunedin.

Six teams of 4 competed, from Christchurch, Westland, Invercargill and Dunedin in a round robin format where each team played all the others with each tie consisting of 2 doubles and 4 singles matches.

Our young OBHS team of Jayden Lu, Jeremy Frei, Joseph Chen and Aaron Young performed especially well beating all other teams bar one, the Burnside High No. 1 team, losing a hard fought battle 4 games to 2.

This procured for us the silver medal, the gold going to Burnside who remained undefeated, with King's High School gaining the bronze.

This was particularly pleasing, an improvement on the bronze medal we won in Christchurch last year.

Of particular note was Joseph Chen who showed he is becoming a force to reckon with winning all his singles games, and Aaron Young who, playing at number 4, displayed courage and persistence to win all but one singles game, several going to 3 sets. Jeremy Frei played steadily and well, winning many games. Jayden Lu our Year 10, number 1 player who stepped up and played out of his skin beating many of the other top ranked players, some much older Year 13 students.

This team of great lads were excellent in both respecting the opposition, never disputing a line call, and in enthusiastically supporting each other. I was also impressed with the parental support, with all parents attending on both days, and in particular the support given by Mr Ali Lu, being great at giving technical advice to the players.

We can look forward to stepping up to a gold medal in the coming years as this team develops in strength and in technique.

It was a real pleasure to manage this team. I enjoyed watching their endeavours and tenacity.

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