Vale Badminton Club

Best part of last night was seeing Chris go up a gear after dropping his and Jack’s first game against the Penarth 1st string. All the stops were pulled out and at 20-19 in the 3rd game Chris aced the opposition to secure the rubber and normal service was resumed.

Chris and Jack took all 3 games, Glyn and James (thanks for standing in for the cap’n) took 1, so with Byron and Kinsey about to play the Penarth 3rds the score was 4-4.

Ok, <cough> it wasn’t a great start - Byron and Kinsey dropped the first game [Ooh, makes it exciting - Ed] but the 2nd game was a pretty cool 21-2 win and then a reasonably easy 21-14 win to finish. Cue applause from the sidelines - Phew!

Final score 5-4 to Vale.

THE 2nd PARKWOOD LEISURE JUNIOR OPEN

The 2nd of February 2008 will see North Devon’s premier junior Badminton tournament burst into action for the 2nd time since it was introduced.

The tournament was joined to the North Devon Tournament last year, but proved so popular that Parkwood Leisure saw the need to hold it as a totally independent tournament.

This is great news for Devon’s rising junior stars as it is being run as an open tournament, which means that entries are open to any junior player residing in the UK.

The events will be split into ‘Novice’ (players who have not played county or league before) and ‘Open’ (any other player not eligible for the ‘Novice’ events), events will be further split into U11, U13, U15 and U17 age groups.

This is the only ‘open’ tournament in Devon that separates the county and non-county/league players, providing a much more level platform of playing standards, promoting more winners at all levels and age groups.

Anyone wishing to enter can download the entry form here.

After a good 7 – 2 Home win against Reardon Smith A team in October, our Mixed B team played the away venue with the hope of another good win.

Unfortunately this was not to be as our 2nd and 3rd pairings were not in good form, the newly promoted 1st pairing of Alan and Kat took all 3 of their games with the game against Reardon Smith 1st pair going to 3.

Vale Mixed B lost the night 6 – 3, the score lines were close but Reardon Smith took the advantage of their home venue for a good win.

AlanD

We’ve had a complaint from a member of the leisure centre staff that some of the juniors from our club went into the lesser hall on Sunday (yesterday) and disturbed all the softplay equipment after it had been tidied up ready for the Monday children’s session. Apparently it’s not the first time it’s happened, and they have been asked not to play in there.

If it continues, Simon (Assistant Manager) will be getting involved and they will have an official warning from the leisure centre.

Jordan/Sam - you listening?

A great night at Holm View with the Men’s A recording their first 9-0 win of the season.

Yes, even Glyn and Alan took 3 games - this was actually better than Byron and Kinsey’s 3 because their 3rd game was only a concession from the Holm View 1st string due to injury. [Pff, we'd have had 'em! - Ed]

What a start to Thursday night - two members of the Mixed A team turning out with injuries!

Helen S limping with an injured knee sustained from sprinting around a running track and Kinsey nursing a bad wrist, apparently as a result of a repetitive strain syndrome injury! [Can't print what Helen called it! - Ed] So could we beat the Arches B with Chris Rees also being unavailable? Could Sally and marvelous stand in, Byron tip the scales? Err… sadly not.

Congrats to the newly formed partnership Kinsey and Sarah who took all 3 of their games. A limping Helen with a dynamic Len took 1, losing their 3rd rubber 22 - 20 in the final game. As for Sal & Byron lets just say they need to practice together!

A really close loss 5-4 but we all look forward to the home return match. Thanks team.

Sal :)

I received an email from inBadminton, the gist of which is that the inBadminton online store has set up a discount code for the Xmas period.

When checking out of the inbadminton store if you enter XMAS07 in the discount/voucher code field you will save 10% on all items ordered. This code is valid until January 14th 2008.

I’ve no idea what their gear is like but maybe some of you are thinking of buying stuff for Xmas.

Byron

Despite the Ladies team carrying some injuries they stuck to the task and achieved a great result, their winning streak continuing last night with a 5-4 win over Cardiff.

Sal & Helen S took their 3 games easily with Suzanne & Sarah taking 2 - but somehow managing to lose in 2 games to the Cardiff third pair (let’s blame it on the injury!) Jayne & Kath ran all three pairs extremely close taking all to three and losing by the odd point or two in the decider.

Requests for ‘drawings’ on the scoresheet need to be made in advance in order for ‘practice to make perfect’!

Glad to see the Men’s club night was spoilt by a ‘ringer’! The ’show court’ as usual resulted in plenty of heckling… and on number one court the ‘father and son’ competition - Simon and Jack v Byron and James… :)

Vale Men’s C dropped their first points of the season when they went down 6-3 at home to Heath Hospital B in a tight match.

Sunday night got off to a bad start with Matthew not showing up at 6pm, so Dan Thomas - nursing a bruised chest (football injury, he says) and struggling in the warm up - stepping down. Simon teamed up with Jordan to play first string and won a super three-setter 21-19 in the third while on the adjacent court Sam and ‘new-boy’ James also scored a promising win.

But from then on it went a bit to cock - Simon and Jordan taking their foot off the gas while Sam and James picked up a second win and just came up short against Heath’s first pair.

Just as we were packing up, Matthew walked in for the ‘8pm start’. Matthew has never played on a Sunday and assumed it was an 8pm kick off and I’m bloody daft for assuming he should know!

We’ll have them on the return in two weeks time. Matthew, Heath Hospital, Thursday, November 29, 7pm!

SF

Who knows, if they’d turned on the lights at Star Leisure things might have been different…

Vale Men’s A got off to a good start against Penarth B with Byron and Kinsey beating a decent first pair and Alan and Glyn beating the thirds.

However the writing was on the wall when the Penarth second string took their opening game against Jack and Howard in two straight games. They had youth and ability in spades and made pretty quick work of all the Vale partnerships.

Thanks to Howard for standing in for Chris, an unenviable task :)

Final score 5-4 to Penarth.