Badminton

[TheLasrStraw]

Y8 DD plays strongly with us as a family and we take her to a Badminton club too.

Does anyone have any experience playing for County etc? How competitive is it? I have no experience of this sort of thing.

I know nothing about badminton but both my brother and I played a sport that I think has a similar set up to badminton. I played at district level, my brother was county level.

The route generally seemed to be:-

1. Join a club and start getting coaching
2. Join a local league
3. Start doing some local tournaments
4. Get picked by district to represent them
5. Get invited to county / regional training sessions
6. Start doing larger tournaments
7. Get picked by county to represent them
8. Start doing national level tournaments
9. Get invited to national trials

10. Get picked to pay internationally

My brother got to stage 9 but then got fed up when he realised that 10 was unlikely to happen. I never got further than step 5 / 6 (I did a few larger tournaments but only because my brother was going anyway and I was always knocked out in the early rounds).

Re:- how competitive is it? Very hard to answer that. Depends how good your Dd is! I remember my parents having a shock when they first took Dh to a national tournament as he was not just hammered by the seed but by the other two in his group as well. They weren’t expecting the standard to be that high. But it turned out that his group was a very high stat card. (One of them best the seed.) But always a shock to discover just how good some kids were.

I started much later than my brother and my parents were surprised how well I was able to do. It is generally much easier for girls in sport than boys to do well early on as there are a lot less girls. (The exceptions being gymnastics, trampolining and dance!) The higher you go though, the tougher it gets for girls. It is easy to get into the top ten if there are only 8 in the competition! But winning - that is hard!

@Mumoftwoinprimary thank you so much for this. Did you have extra private tuition too?

Girls badminton is much more achievable than other sports. She could probably scrape through if she plays well socially once or twice a week, but she’ll have the best chance if she gets some coaching.

Yes - I did have some private tuition. Not until I had been going to tournaments for a few years though - before that it was just group sessions. With hindsight I think I needed private coaching earlier though.

Are you able to find any junior coaching near you? Junior coaching would enable your Dd to meet some like minded friends plus give you an idea of how she compares to others of her age. It would also mean that you can meet some “badminton parents” (like Dance Moms but hopefully slightly more normal!) who can advise you on what tournaments / trials you should be doing.