Kelvin take first steps to Center Parcs

KELVIN Hall's fine crop of badminton players have taken their first steps towards trying to making the final of the National Schools Championships at Center Parcs in Sherwood Forest.

The Bricknell Avenue-based school's combined year 10 and 11 boys and girls teams both won their regional Hull round in some style to make the Hull finals.

The boy's team of Scott Newman, Josh Dickinson, James Fenny and Tom Summers won all 10 matches at their home courts, in a tournament which saw them play singles and doubles games against teams from St Mary's College and Andrew Marvel School.

The girl's badminton quartet of Hannah Colthup, Lydia Edwards, Emma Smith and Kiah Murray also followed suit with a perfect 10 out of 10 record at the school's Active Zone centre against Newland and Andrew Marvel.

Next up for the young racquet stars is the Hull finals and if they come through that they will take on the best from across Humberside to try and win a place in the Yorkshire round.

The winners of that competition then go on to represent Yorkshire at the national finals at the state-of-the-art facility at the Center Parcs holiday village in the Midlands on April 24 and 25.

Last year, in the national competition's inaugural running, St Mary's College's boys squad won the same regional round that Kelvin's two teams have just won and then went on to go all the way to Center Parcs.

The under-16s from St Mary's then finished a superb 4th out of every school in the country to set a benchmark for every school trying to follow in their footsteps.

Joe Grant, who helped organise the regional round and also delivers badminton coaching at Kelvin Hall, told HotShots: "This event is just a really good chance for them.

"We always used to do festivals and other things to improve participation in badminton, but they never had anywhere they could go after that in terms of going onto the next level.

"But with this event each level gets harder and harder and there is real national progression, with the kids having something really good to aim for."

Grant, a school sports coordinator for the St Mary's School Sports Partnership, who is based at Wyke College, believes the young stars at Kelvin have the potential to make a big impact in this year's event.

He added: "Lots of the current Kelvin teams have been playing since an early age at the Hull Badminton Centre and three of the boys team actually play at county level and in senior leagues and competitions.

"Last year this boys team were Key Stage 3 and so this year is their first at Key Stage 4, they've got a bit more experience now and so hopefully they can go well this term like St Mary's last year.

"It was great for the partnership to see St Mary's get to the national finals at Center Parcs as that motivates the rest of the teams and shows what can be done and the hope is we can get there again as it is a great facility there."

This year the Center Parcs National Schools Championships has seen a record entry of 1,200 schools entering and over 18,000 children taking part.

Olympic badminton silver medallist Nathan Robertson said: "The Center Parcs National Schools Championships last year were a huge success with over 1,000 schools entering and from what I've heard, there are even more entries this year.

"Last year's final was held at Center Parcs' Sherwood Forest Village and it was all very professionally run and we saw some great play as a result.

"It's a really good opportunity for youngsters coming up through the ranks to experience what it's like to play in a top class tournament."