Jr Badminton Championships
On Thursday, May 2, Wakaw School hosted the Junior District Badminton playoffs. Horizon School Division covers approximately 30,970 square kilometres from Wakaw in the north to Bulyea in the south, and Viscount in the west to Foam Lake in the east with a total of 43 schools bringing education to children from Kindergarten to grade twelve. Due to the sheer size of the Division, most school sports need to hold pre-district qualifiers to arrive at a manageable number of teams for playoffs. With the Division sub-divided into five zones: northwest, northeast, north central, southeast, and southwest, the qualifiers ensure that students from all areas of Horizon School Division have equal opportunities to advance to the championship playoffs.
Wakaw has hosted the badminton pre-district qualifier in the past but only had three courts before the new gym flooring was put in place a few years ago. Now with four courts available, Wakaw meets the minimum facilities requirement for hosting the playoffs. Coaching badminton this year were Educational Assistant, Stephanie Green, and Cheryl Sosnowski, who were busy all day keeping the courts filled and the scoresheets tabulated.
Forty- six teams took to the courts from Bruno, Leroy, Lanigan, Muenster, Wadena, Wynyard, Humboldt, Raymore, Strasbourg, Annaheim, Englefeld, Imperial, Lake Lenore, Foam Lake, Nokomis, Holdfast, Rose Valley, and Wakaw to play a grand total of 99 matches including pool play and final matches. The day started at 9:00 am with the courts being open for warm-ups before the match-play got underway. The last matches wrapped up just after 7:00 pm.
The players in badminton act as their own scorekeepers and once a match has been completed both teams verify the score by signing the scorecard that is then handed to the officials. What could have been a sad turn of events for a player from Lanigan, ended on a happy note thanks to the honesty and integrity of his opponent from Wadena. The young man from Lanigan actually won the match, however, the scores of the final game were mistakenly recorded wrong and showed the young man from Wadena as winning the match. Upon learning what had happened, Dylan Prevost from Wadena came to the official’s desk and stated that he had not won the match and that Kash Elke from Lanigan had won. Both players were asked to come to the official’s desk where they both agreed on the nature of the mistake and then verified the correction. The integrity of Dylan epitomizes what fair play in sports is all about.
Although Wakaw’s girls' doubles team consisting of Allison Frie and Zoe Sander did not make it into the final playoff match, they did finish the season in third place behind the girls from Ituna and Lanigan.
Carol Baldwin, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Wakaw Recorder
