Hawks eye fun ‘birdy’ season

Justin Seward
Times Reporter

 

The Holy Cross Collegiate Hawks junior high badminton team is swinging into another season with a lot of new faces that haven’t been introduced to the sport, and head coach Ben Chin knows he’ll have to go back to basic skill development with players in practice.
He added that it’s a really short season for them because of the lack of facilities to start practices in January, compared to other schools, and said that playing in other sports helps prepare the students physically and mentally when badminton season rolls around.
“It’s got its pros and cons,” said Chin.
“You don’t want to infringe on some of the other sports. Even if we did have the facilities, we have such a small student-athlete body, that if we started badminton earlier, we’d either be pulling kids from sports that they’re already involved in or make them choose between sports. Or we’d just lose those athletes, who would’ve played badminton if we’d started too early because they’d already been committed to whatever else is going on in their lives.”
The positive to come of a month long season is that the team does fairly well at counties and zones, where over the years there have been several individuals who have placed in the Top 5 at the high school level.
“If we had more kids at the junior high level starting from an earlier age, we ‘d have higher calibre competition to practice against,” said Chin.
“Even if you do have the couple teams that are quite proficient already, we don’t always have the numbers to necessarily give them good practice time. It’s just the consistency that will be our biggest challenge.”
Senior head coach Daniel Patterson has seen a bigger turnout for the team this year, including six Grade 10s and the addition of a few more Grade 11s coming out to play.
The focus this year will be having more consistency in areas of the team game.
“This year we’re working on fundamental drills, working on not so much the basics, a little more advanced than that,” said Patterson.
“But keeping things consistent is the goal this year. Just to maintain shots consistently and play consistently throughout the beginning of the games to the end of the game. In this game, the slightest centimeters off, whether it’s your swing or it’s the placement of the bird usually means its points in or out.”
He added that if they’re going to see success this season they’ll have to go into matches with a positive attitude knowing that there will be games against strictly badminton schools.