It was a near clean sweep of the banners for Sir John at the NWT High School Badminton Tournament.
The tournament ran over the first weekend of December with the singles brackets taking place on Dec. 7 and finals wrapping up the morning of Dec. 8 before the doubles tournaments both started and finished up.
The Sir John Franklin Falcons took home every banner except the 19U girls double where the tandem of Katie Hart and Hanna Courtoreille were able to best Sir John’s Jennifer Lalonde and Tanisha McMullen.
“There were 37 kids from Sir John, St Pats had 28 kids and then four from (Ecole) Alain St-Cyr,” said tournament organizer and Sir John coach Jeremy Kielstra. “It was over Friday night and Saturday, we did all the singles stuff on Friday and most of the doubles on Saturday with a few exceptions, because some of the singles finals were on Saturday.”
In both the junior and senior boy singles tournament Sir John swept the podium, while two tandems from St Pat’s took silver and bronze in the junior boys doubles. On the girl’s side, Katie Hart on the senior bracket and Jannerie Largoza on the junior’s were able to spoil the Falcon party with second and third place finishes respectively.
“Everything went pretty smoothly, both banners were won by Sir John, the junior and the senior ones,” said Kielstra.
He said the numbers appeared to be up from last year with Sir John and Ecole Alain St-Cyr fielding larger teams than the 2017 edition of the tournament. While it was the NWT High School Championships, the tournament only featured Yellowknife athletes. Kielstra said a number of teams from outside the capitol expressed interest, but none made the trip. The tournament was held on the same weekend as a volleyball tournament and Hay River hosted another badminton tournament the next weekend.
“No one came in from out of town, a few schools expressed some interest, but it turns out none of them showed up, there was also a volleyball tournament on the same weekend so I think some kids got pulled there,” said Kielstra.
St Pat’s and Ecole Alain St-Cyr won’t have to wait long to get their revenge on the Falcons though as Kielstra said they are already planning for a larger tournament in either late February or March. That tournament has the potential to feature larger bragging rights as the organizers are expecting teams from the South Slave to make the trip up to Yellowknife.
“We always have another tournament in late February, early March and that one ends up getting a lot more out of town kids, Hay River, Fort Smith usually sends kids up for that tournament,” said Kielstra.