ShuttleBusters

BADMINTON IN YEOVIL

INTRODUCTION - ABOUT THIS SITE

This website is about promoting and organising badminton for adults, supplementary to the activities of the clubs and leagues. Although it's devoted mainly to the Yeovil or South Somerset and North Dorset area, if you're interested in similar things in other areas then see the Guest Pages section.

Key things that are missing for badminton in our area are

• Opportunities for adult beginners.
• Coaching and playing opportunities for adult improvers.
• A route for youngsters to continue playing after learning in the junior system.
• An easy way for people to get into competitive play.
• Competitive singles, mens doubles and ladies doubles.
• Publicity for badminton as a sport

BEGINNERS & IMPROVERS

Most clubs don't take beginners and are sniffy about improvers. Even those that have coaches don't set aside any time for them even though the majority of club players today started to play as adults and most local league clubs did run improver sessions in the past, or were founded on the back of evening clases or improver clubs.

In this area those clubs that do have coaching sessions restrict them to juniors but this does little to improve numbers. Most club members who started as juniors are actually following their parents. Coaching juniors only helps your club by improving the playing standards among youngsters who'd be likely to grow up and join the club anyway.

JUNIORS

For most youngsters playing in junior clubs, unless they're very good and make it to league or county level (or they can follow a parent into a club) then badminton stops when they no longer qualify as juniors. Many youngsters coached in the county system never reach a level to play in competition (which needs experience, not just coaching and practice). There are no connections between the junior system and the clubs - often there isn't even a connection between the junior and senior sections within a club.

COMPETITION

The only way is to get into competitive play is to join an existing team and play in the league, which is hard to do, and means making a big committment right from the start. Open competition is needed, where players need to commit to only one game at a time and where they can test themselves whether they're ready to commit to a full season. The same type of occasional competition is also needed to retain players with other committments (especially ones with young families, and students who go away to college).

A tournament system would be best but probably needs to start with a larger player base. There are plenty of club tournaments, but most of these are closed events even though it wouldn't be difficult to include guests and "connections" who aren't members, exchanges and pairs from other clubs - or even leave room for outright open entries. Friendly matches are probably the easiest form of comeptitive play to organise.

MIXED DOUBLES

The ratio of male to female players is between two and three to one. In an area like this, where the only format available is mixed doubles, a team must have as many ladies as men - so anything up to half the playing population is excluded. That reduces the number of people to spread the word of mouth (still the cheapest and most effective method of publicity) and reduces the number who might recruit their kids to the sport as well. It also generates a lot of negative publicity and friction within clubs - selection committee aren't deciding who should play with who, and in what competition - they're deciding who can play at all, and telling the rest they can't.

PUBLICITY

Badminton as a sport has a reputation for clubishness, and badminton clubs have bad reputations that they often seem to work hard to maintain. There's very little positive publicity generated. Almost all of what does appear originates with the county junior system. If you want to organise something, there's no established way to publicise or promote it. There's no organised method for getting information to other badminton players or potential players in the area.