‘Birders’ wind up season

Badminton may not be considered among Canada’s major sports, but the club here in Fort Frances definitely has had staying power.
Manami Alexander originally began coaching the Muskie badminton team in 1992, but felt the season was too short to make a positive impact on the student players so she created the Fort Frances Badminton Club in 1996.
She has seen it grow and prosper ever since.
The club held its annual wind-up and awards event Monday at Fort High, with several members taking home some hardware to go along with a good year.
The MVPs of each age bracket were Tim Desjardins (high school and up), Sarah Bagacki (11-13), and Anika Alexander (eight-10).
The tops in attendance also were presented with mini shuttles, including Bagacki (95 percent attendance), Alexander (91 percent), and Taylor Shouldice and Alexa Lasperance (83 percent).
Despite the obstacles one might have making a badminton program work in a town the size of Fort Frances, Manami Alexander seems to have the right formula.
She currently runs two sessions a week, on Monday and Wednesday nights, with the eight- to 13-year-olds (Junior I and II) in the first session and the high school students and up in the second group.
About half of her 20 members compete on a regular basis.
“It’s not a major sport, so it’s hard to organize kids to take them out of town, but the ones that go do really well and compete at a high level,” said Alexander.
“Since we are so far away from the Toronto area, most of the tournaments we go to are in Winnipeg against Manitoba teams,” she noted.
Desjardins and partner Jamie Jensen advanced to the all-Ontarios in the boys’ doubles division earlier this spring, winning their first two matches before being eliminated.
They qualified for OFSAA after finishing in second place with a 3-1 record at the NWOSSAA championships back on April 23 in Wawa.
The rest of the team also had good showings at NWOSSAA, though just falling short of advancing to OFSAA.
Rory Bagacki finished third in the boys’ singles division, Chelsea Carlson was third in the girls’ singles event, while Jillian Barry and Hannah Taylor took third in girls’ doubles at Wawa.
Anika Alexander and Sarah Bagacki, meanwhile, each placed first in their respective divisions at the under-14 Junior Open in Winnipeg last October.
The club also hosted its annual invitational tournament back on March 28-30.
“When we host our tournament, we get players from both Ontario and Manitoba because we are kind of in-between, so it’s nice that we can host a big enough tournament to get players from all over,” Alexander said.
“We had 100 entries and our club members did really well, collected quite a few medals,” she added.
Picking up most improved awards on Monday were Taylor Whitehead and Nicole LePine in the Junior I division, along with Kimika Alexander, Erin Gustafson, Celia Barry, Taylor Shouldice, Alexa Lasperance, and Ben Tysz (in Junior II).
Chelsea Carlson, Rory Bagacki, Hannah Taylor, Jillian Barry, Ryan Shouldice, and Jamie Jensen all received ribbons in the senior division.
The club is slated to resume action Sept. 8 at Robert Moore School.