Strathmore high wins zones

Times Reporter

 

Strathmore High School (SHS) badminton players have once again done their school proud by bringing home another zones banner. This is the third banner the school has earned in the last five years. 

“It’s a bit of a surprise because we only had 21 kids go to zones and sometimes I’ve gone with as many as 30, and so the kids who were there did very well,” said coach Kenton Zandee. 

Zandee feels if there had been a banner to win for the last 20 years, SHS would have easily brought home 10 of them. Though he credits the players who went to zones with helping bring the banner home, Zandee also feels those who didn’t attend played a crucial role. 

“In order to win zones everyone’s got to get a few wins. You can’t just have one or two people winning a lot because that doesn’t get you the number of points you need. So it’s definitely a team effort,” said Zandee.

“I would also give credit to the players who did not make it to zones because they were at the practices working hard, challenging the guys who actually did manage to make it to zones. 

“If you don’t have that sort of nucleus it’s very difficult for kids to develop and so that’s one of the advantages of Strathmore High School compared to a lot of our competitors. We had about 30 really good kids (and) only 21 made it to zones, but a lot of times they were beating each other out for those positions.”

Many of this year’s players are in Grade 12, but Zandee could see from the junior high zones held on May 4 that there is a lot of talent coming his way from the Grade 9 students.