Hat gearing up to host HS badminton provincials

By JAMES TUBB on May 5, 2022.

jtubb@medicinehatnews.com@ReporterTubb

The best high school badminton players in the province will be in Medicine Hat this week.

The Alberta Schools’ Athletic Association’s badminton provincials tournament is in town Friday and Saturday, with games taking place at Hat High, Crescent Heights High School, South Ridge YMCA and Notre Dame.

Marg Derbyshire, tournament chair and South zone secretary, said Medicine Hat was supposed to host the provincials in 2020 before COVID shut it down. She said they had a lot of stuff planned for 2020 which they pulled out of the box for this tournament.

“It has all been sitting here in boxes and just waiting to be used,” Derbyshire said. “The metals were all labelled and all divided up into their categories. It’s a relief to have it finished.”

Derbyshire was at the South zone’s tournament last weekend in Lethbridge, which athletes needed to qualify at in order to play in provincials. She thinks the two-year pause due to COVID and the fact provincials is in Medicine Hat helped propel the 15 Hatters who qualified for this weekend’s tournament.

“It’s exciting to have the local kids. They worked so hard and it’s just really rewarding for them to feel proud of their school when it’s being hosted in their city,” Derbyshire said. “It’s pretty special because I saw some really excited kids in Lethbridge zones when they qualified first and second for provincials. It was more exuberant than I kind of ever noticed before.”

Derbyshire said whenever the South zone has hosted badminton provincials in the past it’s been in Lethbridge because they had the court space. After Hat High’s gym renovation and the YMCA having room for courts, the Hat became a viable option. She said hosting a tournament like this is a team effort city wide.

“Stay in Medicine Hat organization, the hotel association, has banded together backing us up and giving us code numbers for people to get hotels,” Derbyshire said. “They’re involved with T-shirts, our volunteer T-shirts, they say Medicine Hat as a thank-you to them for their kick-back on that. It’s all kind of local economy.”

The two-day tournament, which gets started Friday at 12:30 p.m., has 65 volunteers to help keep matches moving, record scores, announce match times, etc. Derbyshire said Badminton Alberta and executive director Jeff Bell have set up the entire tournament schedule and will be in the Hat over the weekend to ensure smooth running. There will also be a Badminton Alberta official in each location to enforce any rules as needed.

All junior round-robin games Friday will be played at Crescent Heights, intermediates will play at the YMCA/Notre Dame, with the seniors battling it out at Hat high. Come Saturday, all the gold and bronze matches are held at Hat High. Every athlete is guaranteed three matches and a lanyard, which may be from 2020 but will stand out Derbyshire said.

“When we started planning (in 2020), we ordered lanyards for each kid as a kind of memento. It says Provincial Badminton Medicine Hat 2020, and there’s just no way that you can screen over it,” Derbyshire said with a laugh. “It was over $1,000 to buy these anyway and to just throw them away, that’s not good. So we’re saying here’s your memento and we can laugh about it being two years to get this.”

Derbyshire said the public is welcome to watch one of the 589 badminton matches this weekend at all of the venues, with admission $2 per day and $3 for the weekend.

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