Leicestershire Badminton Juniors achieve national success

Leicestershire's junior badminton players have recently completed their most successful season ever, with teams at all 4 junior age groups reaching the Finals of the annual Shires League, which is the most prestigious team event in the junior competition calendar. This league sees counties from all over the UK field teams of 4 boys and 4 girls at U12, U14, U16 and U18 who then compete throughout the year in regional groups with the top 8 counties contesting Finals Day at the Stoke Mandeville Stadium in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire.

With Finals Day for each age group being held throughout May, the U18 team finished the season in 8^th place while the U12 youngsters, some of whom are as young as 9, improved on this to end the season in 7^th place. Having faced a very tough group round which saw losses against top teams Yorkshire and Warwickshire, the U16 team did fantastically well on their Finals Day to improve their overall finish from 10^th place to 6^th

With just the U14 team to play their Finals, hopes were high that they could finish even higher, having been unbeaten throughout the season and lying in 3^rd place in the League table going into the last day's play. They beat Cheshire 15-5 in Round 1 before winning a very close rubber against Hampshire which saw the teams tied 10-10 on games won, with Leicestershire going through to the last round by just 2 points! With just Yorkshire left to face, the team repeated their group stage 13-7 victory of earlier in the season, this time winning 12-8 to take the title for the 2016/17 season – a truly historic win as this is the first time a Leicestershire team at any group has lifted the Shires League title!

Looking good for the future as well, the under 11yrs Primary Midway team won Silver in Yorkshire.

Congratulations to all the players!