Hard work served two Port Hope High School Spartans badminton teams quite well as they capped an impressive season last Thursday in Brighton by earning gold medals at the Central Ontario Secondary School Athletics junior championships.
Eve Garrison and Watika Woodward won the girls doubles division while Christian Langstaff and Evan Prince were victorious in boys doubles.
All four are Grade 10 students at Port Hope High and after not being satisfied with their results last year continued playing badminton outside of school.
“Last year Watika and I made it to COSSA, but we didn’t do so well,” Garrison said. “This year all four of us joined the Port Hope Racquet Club and we practised two nights a week for six months. We improved so much and it all paid off in the end when we all won gold.”
Both Langstaff and Prince had played their inaugural high school badminton season as singles competitors. It wasn’t until they joined the club that their tandem was formed. They’re glad they did.
“We became smarter badminton players. Badminton’s not just hitting the birdie back-and-forth. You have to position it well and with help from our coaches, Jolyon Thompson and Amelia Grieger, we expanded on our mental badminton play,” Langstaff remarked. “We had never really practised as a team because we were all about singles last year and then at the club our coach suggested us playing together and it worked out quite well. We know each other’s strengths and weaknesses and used those to become a great doubles team.”
As singles competitors, neither made it past the Kawartha qualifying tournament in 2012.
“With doubles you have to work as a team, so there’s a lot less running and moving and you can more focus on the placement of the birdie,” Prince said.
Both the teams of Garrison / Woodward and Langstaff / Prince went undefeated during the high school badminton season as they won the pre-qualifier, qualifier, Kawartha Secondary School Athletic Association championships and the COSSA titles.
Garrison said the competition picked up at the COSSA tournament.
“We didn’t have a lot competition before,” she said. “We all went undefeated all year, but it wasn’t until COSSA that we would actually get nervous about games. We didn’t go in cocky and confident — we just hoped to do well.”
“We played a team we had played in the previous tournament and it wasn’t our best game so we went into the final match kind of worrying,” Prince added. “We just ended up playing the way we know how and took it home.”
Port Hope High’s two COSSA-winning teams were also key to the Spartans capturing the overall team title at the Kawartha championship tournament for the first time in school history.
There were 14 team members to start the season, said Port Hope coach Amelia Grieger, and seven of them advanced as far as the Kawartha tournament.
Five players, including the four between the two teams, qualified for the COSSA tournament. First-year player Rebecca Moffatt placed fifth in the girls singles division and coach Grieger said that performance bodes well for the player in the future.
Grieger wasn’t surprised to see the success of the two COSSA-winning squads.
“They’re great kids and they deserved it — hard work and dedication throughout the whole season,” she said. “To have them win it was a very proud moment as a coach...I was proud for them. They questioned themselves along the way and were nervous and they didn’t take any of it for granted.”
Next year they move up to the senior level where a COSSA win would advance them to the OFSAA provincial championships. That’s their eventual goal — whether it happens next year or is two years down the road.
“Maybe not next year because we are the younger ones, but in Grade 12 it will be the same group of people who we played this year so we’ll hope to win COSSA and qualify for OFSAA,” Langstaff said.
