2017/18 Senior County Teams Selected

Hi Everybody

Well now the dust from the restricted and tirals has settled, the selection committee has sat down over a few meetings and done the difficult job of trying to select teams. We have done this on a number of criteria:

• County performances from previous seasons;
• Results at the restricted;
• Results in other competitive events (leagues and tournaments);
• Potential for improvement;
• Availability;
• Discipline strength (given the format of the current county Competition);
• Commitment to the county.

We have been exceptionally lucky to be able to field some very strong teams this year and are hoping that we can fight for promotion in all 3 divisions.

Dates for your diary:

• 11th November: county match;
• 25th November: county teams social;
• 27th January: county match;
• 24th/25th March: county matches.

Below are the players selected for each county team this season. Please be aware that 1 man can now play in all 3 disciplines in a single match and so some players may play all 3, whilst others may only play 1.

Ist Team

• 2017/18 Ladies: Jenny Crump, Sara Cunnington, Hannah Sharman, Nat Taylor (C)
• 2017/18 Men: Andrew Kidger, Min Dabasinskas, Joe Pickering Sam Scharf, Martin Crossley

IInd Team

• 2017/18 Ladies: Olga Chernysheva, Alison Reed, Alison Meijers, Adele Woodhams, Jess Sharman
• 2017/18 Men: Dan Bates (c), Stephen Pickering, Neil Place, Simon Parker, Chris Tustian, 

IIIrd Team

• 2017/18 Ladies: Kerry Kellett (c), Chanumi Gamage, Steph Jong, Vicky Norris, Hannah Robertshaw
• 2017/18 Men: Jack Curtis, Chris Clarke, Michael Duncan, Mike Parker, Alex Wilson

Reserves 

Ruth le Fevre, Jude Ashman, Liz salmon, James wilson, Abu Kaher, Sanjeev Balasuthenthirarajan, Bertrand Bonnet-Badillé

Reserves are also pulled from a wide variety of players and may change over the season.

Congratulations to all that made it, and best of luck with the season!

The Selection Committee

County Selection Trials: 24th September

Cambridge County Badminton run 3 Senior County teams who are selected from a squad of players each year. All 3 teams play in the Badminton England Inter-Counties League.

Cambridgeshire Ists: Division 2 - Central
Cambridgeshire IInds: Division 3 - Central
Cambridgeshire IIIrds: Division 4 - East 

Cambridgeshire County Badminton Trials will be held at the University of Cambridge Sports Centre on the 24th September 2017.

Trials will be run at various times between 2pm and 6pm. If you are affiliated to Badminton England, eligible to represent the County, and would like to attend, please email nat_taylor@yahoo.co.uk who will confirm your place and send you your trial time.

A Facebook event is available at: https://www.facebook.com/events/1924126441174828/

Start of season newsletter

With the start of the season rapidly approaching, a newsletter from the new County Committee was sent to the secretary of each affiliated club, asking them to pass it on to all of their members playing badminton in the County.

The message contained important information about major changes to the County Committee, and information about junior, senior and masters badminton in the County.  If you didn't get the letter then feel free to nudge your secretary to pass such information along!  In the mean time, the message is below:

Dear Club Secretary,

Please see below some updates about Cambridgeshire Badminton Association for the upcoming season.  I would be grateful if you could circulate this to your members so that they can keep up-to-date about badminton in the County.

AGM

Apologies for the delay in you receiving this information, but ahead of the new season I wanted to let you know that following the Cambridgeshire AGM this year it was agreed to raise the county affiliation fees as follows:

Senior: £2.80
Junior: £0.75
Associated Seniors: £2.00

At the AGM, the majority of the long-standing committee members stood down, after dedicating a very significant period of service.  The leaving members had served on the committee for a breathtaking combined 111+ years of work supporting the sport, and club members!

The County Committee is therefore now as follows:

Chairman/Publicity Officer: Daniel Bates
Secretary: Louise Place
Treasurer: Graham Barr
Registration Secretary: Campbell Wilson
Match Secretary/ South Cambs League Rep: Simon Parker
Tournament Secretary: Neil Place
Coaching Coordinator: James Wilson
Masters Coordinator: Nick Pratt

General Committee Members: Sahan Gamage, Ruth LeFevre, Geoff McCall, Damian Saunders.

Please remember the Association is run by volunteers and we need your support to keep Badminton going in the County. If you can help out with anything or have constructive comments please let us know.

COUNTY RESTRICTED

For those that are interested the annual County Restricted Tournament will be held on the weekend of 1st and 2nd October at Swavesey Village College:

Singles: Saturday 1st October 9am-3pm
Level and Mixed Doubles: Sunday 2nd October 9am-6pm

Anyone wishing to be considered for a County team should certainly make the effort to enter, as this is the best chance to pit your abilities against the most players from around the County. Entries will open within the next couple of weeks (announced on the website and Facebook) and will be via Tournament Software as per last year. 

We are also looking for volunteers to help with running the tournament, even if it's just for an hour or two. Please speak to myself or Neil (neilplace101@gmail.com) if you can help.
Please pass these details on to any of your club members who may be interested.  

MASTERS TEAMS

The county is also running Over 45s and Over 50s teams this year and are hoping to have an Over 40s team next year. If you are in either of these age groups (or approaching soon) and would like to get involved please contact Nick Pratt (nick.pratt68@gmail.com).

JUNIORS

We are also very excited that the County is fielding two junior teams this season, for the first time in several years.  Cambridgeshire will have an U18 and U16 team, and the teams will participate in regular squad practice sessions.  If you have juniors who you think are strong enough to try out for a team, please send in their details so that they can be invited.

COACHING

The Association has a long-standing commitment to coaching and development within the County.  If you are interested in taking your coaching badges, the County offers bursaries to help with the cost for anyone who can demonstrate they will be coaching in the area.  Please contact me for more information.

To keep up-to-date with other badminton news in the County, please do check the website at www.cambridgeshirebadminton.org and ‘like’ the Facebook page (search for “Cambs Badminton”).

Wishing you all an enjoyable and successful season!

Any comments or queries, please let me know.

Kind Regards,

Louise Place
Hon. Secretary
Cambridgeshire County Badminton

Cambs 3 win 1 lose 2 in difficult, but very fun final weekend!

Hey folks, Simon Parker here reporting for Cambs3's last weekend! So much to tell, but will try to keep it as brief as possible! Campbell stolen by the 2s and Rachel unable to play, Mike and Alison subbed in.

Lost 6-5 to northants2
Lost the first 6 games (all the singles and 1 mens), won the next 5. Lots of close ends but we were well beaten in the singles. 10-minute highly embarrassing score row in the middle of Me and Mike's men's (are we 19-16 up or 19-18 up?) Eventually settled on 19-17 and then won the last two points anyway rendering the whole thing completely pointless. Cringe. Good win for Ruth & Alison in the ladies in 3 close ends.

Lost 9-2 to Suffolk2
Very comfortably beaten in all of the singles except mine against their 3rd man which I managed to scrape. Lost all the rest except me and Mikes doubles which we won in three; won 21-10 in the last after a great piece of advice from Mike which really deconstructed them as a pair. Liz & Mike very nearly took their mixed but lost 21-18 in the 3rd - pretty good for a pair who had never played together before!

NOW THE FUN BEGINS

So the 2nds had TWO injuries on Saturday, which meant they took Alex and Tom (the only two players not staying overnight in Oakham!) for the Sunday. I then spent about 2 hours on the phone to various reserve men to see if anyone would make the trip. My first 10-15 players couldn't make it SLASH couldn't drive and weren't up for taking the train. I eventually managed to recruit Martin Crossley and Chris Parker to take the train up and play - I swear to god I'm not just being "that guy" and asking my brother/clubmate, I genuinely did ask everyone on the reserve list plus a few others!!!

Fresh from that stress, the remaining 7 of us went out for dinner and drinks, which was actually really good fun :)

On the Sunday, Martin and Chris managed to miss their stop (ahhhh!). Meaning Liz had to sit around for about an hour until they arrived in Peterborough to pick them up (THANKS LIZ!). Everyone was late. Negotiations with the opposition ensued but they were graceful, thankfully.

Won 6-5 Against Lincs2
Once again, we lost all of our singles (partly because all 3 of our normal singles men were taken by the bloody 2nd team at this point hehe) except Alison who took hers in two very tidy ends. We then won almost all of the remaining fixtures, including Chris & Bertie's mens and Martin/Kerry's Mixed. Alison and Ruth unfortunately struggled against a strong 2nd pair, but in the best viewed game of the season, Kerry and Mike won the very final game 28-26 sealing the win to rapturous applause and many-a high five!

A really fun season in the end and a really good atmosphere within the team throughout the weekend. I'm sad it's over now! Thanks to everyone that played for us over the season :)

Cambs 3 Win 1 Lose 1 In First Day's Fixtures

On Saturday 7th November Cambs3 went off for our first set of matches against Beds2 and Northants3. With all the teams now playing on the same day, any higher teams needing subs meant we would need sub players. We lost Rachel and Bertrand a few weeks in advance to higher call-ups. I then went off to Peterborough to practice with Liz earlier that week to try and get a partnership going and (with a healthy spoonful of irony) then rolled my ankle, so that ruled me out. Then, to really rub that in, Liz and Campbell were called up last minute to higher teams anyway - which left us scrambling a bit. Luckily we could get strong subs in for all but 1 of those spots – I’d run the reserves list dry and had asked at least 8 additional players but I just couldn’t find a last man, so I had to man up and play :) . No resentment directed at our higher teams though, that’s just the way it goes with this new format!

Beds2 were a tough bunch. They finished just below our 2nd team last year so was a bit of an ask for us to beat them. Tom was the only one to win his singles, though Alex had a very close 3ender. Kerry and Jacquie took their ladies, and Mike and I took our men's, but we lost the rest of the games resulting in an 8-3 loss.

The Northants3 game went a little better. They fielded a team with some strong juniors in which was good to see. Kevin also showed up to watch, but we twisted his arm to help bail Mike out of his singles, who was unpracticed having not known he was playing singles until the day before the match heh. All 5 singles games went our way in 2 ends, with some won to single digits! The levels followed suit, as cambs took all 4 games comfortably. Kerry had to play against her partner in the mixed – I don’t know if that made her play better or worse. Regardless, Kerry & Tom played well to win. The combination of straps and painkillers was really helping my ankle to I swapped in to play mixed instead of Thas who hadn’t quite gelled with Jacquie as we’d hoped having never played together before. Jacquie and I reunited our junior county partnership to success and won in 2 ends. Final overall score of 11-0 win!

All in all a really fun day with good games, a really sociable atmosphere, and a friendly team who helped support each other throughout. Massive thanks to all our subs, but particularly Jacquie who filled in at really late notice, won 3 /4 of her rubbers, and put up with me in the mixed :). Roll on December 12th!

(Simon Parker)

Senior County Team Trials

All-comers County team trials will be held at CRC on 20th September, 2-4pm.

The purpose of the session is to provide an opportunity for people to put themselves forward for potential county selection and provide a chance to identify potential for the future.

There are 3 courts booked for 2 hours, shuttles provided by the county; there will be a small contribution to the courts needed depending on numbers.

As we are constrained to only 6 court hours, numbers must be limited to around 20 to avoid long periods of sitting off. Priority will be given to those who RSVP first.

Anyone interested should email the selection committee to let them know: selection@cambridgeshirebadminton.org

Cambs IIIrds Register Norfolk Win

Cambs IIIrds started their first home match of the season with a win in both men's singles. James Watkins took a while to get going against Norfolk number one, winning comfortably in the third end 21 -12. Geoff Green at number two, recently welcomed back from a month of Carribean holiday, cruised to a comfortable win in two ends. Ladies singles, and our ladies found it tough against well trained opposition. Both ladies losing in two ends.

2-2, going into the men's doubles, Paul Martell and James Watkins playing at number one, after going awol in the second, won the third easily 21-9. They also went on to defeat the second pairing. New pairing of Damien Dugmore and Geoff Greene comfortably beating the second pair, and just losing out to the first's 21-19, 21-19. The ladies competed in some well-contested games, Laurel Bennett and Liz Salmon, losing to the first pair in two and narrowly losing out to the seconds in three. Sharon Chandler and Klaudia Otoka were unlucky not to take the second pair to three and lost out to the first in two ends.

Going into the mixed 5-7, Cambs had it all to do. News spread quickly that Liz had brought some of legendary chocolate brownies, sugared up, Sharon and Paul at number one had too much quality for their opposition winning in two. With Liz and James replicating the score line, it was 7-7, winner takes all! Laurel and Damien with nerves of steel made it look easy, winning in two ends, to take the tie 8-7.

A great win, showing our strength in mixed game play.

Joint players of the match: Laurel and Damien.

The Team: Damien Dugmore, James Watkins, Geoff Green, Paul Martell (c), Laurel Bennett, Liz Salmon, Sharon Chandler, Klaudia Otoka (j)

Match report by Paul Martell.

More information about results of the Cambs III team is available on the Team Page.