Muskie ‘birders’ battled hard at OFSAA

Three Muskie badminton players ran up against some tough competition at the all-Ontario championships in Thunder Bay last weekend.
The mixed doubles team of Siobhan Devlin and Jamie Booth opened with an exciting 15-4, 12-15, 15-6 victory over Amanda Meyer and Jason Brouwer (St. Catharines) last Thursday.
But they were bounced from further contention after losing their second-round match 1-15 and 9-15 to Mark Machado and Deanna (Cambridge).
The Muskie duo, who had only started playing together as a team earlier this year, fell behind early. And while they rallied in the second game of the best-of-three match, they couldn’t sustain the run.
“They’re really good,” Booth said of the players who made the trip to Lakehead University’s C.J. Sanders Fieldhouse. “This is the only sport they play all year around.”
The tournament was the second OFSAA appearance for the two OAC students this year. Booth played goal for the gold-medal winning Muskie boys’ hockey team while Devlin was on the senior girls’ volleyball squad that captured the consolation title.
They had earned the OFSAA berth in badminton by winning the silver medal at the NWOSSAA final in Kenora two weeks ago.
“You always want to win at this level. But we’re having fun,” said Booth.
Meanwhile, in girls’ single action, grade 12 student Tara Svoboda, still feeling the effects of a twisted right ankle at that same Kenora tournament, lost to Numazini David (0-15, 0-15) in her first-round match.
Then in the ‘B’ flight, she fell 1-15, 1-15 to Melissa Bota (Loellen).
But Svoboda fought through the injury and played well in the ‘C’ flight, being narrowly defeated by Pam Yaguchi of Thomas Aquinas in Kenora (13-15, 6-15).  Head coach Manami Alexander said Svoboda showed heart on the court in her last year as a Muskie.
“Her ankle was very swollen,” she said. “I told her, ‘If you’d like to finish, go ahead.’ Because this is her last tournament, she wanted to play in it.”
Not wanting to blame the injury, Svoboda echoed Booth’s assessment of the competition.
“[The sore ankle was] probably the reason I loss so bad [in the opening round],” she said. “But they’re just good players.”
Svoboda had been with the both the Muskie team and the Fort Frances Badminton Club since grade nine.
The Muskies have had moderate success at the all-Ontario level under Alexander’s 10 years as coach. In 1999, Katie Vittie played in the girls’ singles while in 1995, Derrick Pruys and Sabine Laser were the mixed-doubles reps.
Despite losing Booth, Devlin, and Svoboda to graduation this year, Alexander said younger Muskies are waiting in the wings to return to OFSAA.
“This year was very exciting because the level of the teams was higher than previous years,” she noted of her 23-person squad.
“I’m looking at two or three teams, if they work hard this winter, to have potential to go to the provnicials,” she added.