ICSM Badminton still unbeaten

With the highest number of members in the history of the club, it has been one of the most successful years for ICSM Badminton in both team performance and social events. All of our teams have put on their best performance yet with the women’s and mixed doubles’ team currently taking the top spot in their leagues.

The women’s team remains undefeated since the start of the season and they have continued the winning streak with the most recent 8-0 white-wash against King College London on Wednesday. Sarah and our team Captain, Miko, have stepped up to the challenge of being the singles players for matches after the departure of one of our great singles players, Ayla, who was a Dutch student interning at Imperial College for 4 months. With 2 sets won for each singles games, our two doubles pairs, Peachy & Annie and Hannah & myself, managed to win the remaining four games to give us a perfect team victory.

The mixed team had one of their toughest matches against St. Barts (Queen Mary Medics) at our home ground. Our three mixed doubles pairs, Annie (captain) & Bob, Lochani & Tom and Yan & myself, put on our best performance and managed to narrowly win 5-4, but unfortunately one of the players was injured during their match and the game had to be forfeited.

The men’s 1st and 2nd teams have displayed good performances as they are both respectably placed in their leagues, under the sturdy leadership of Ananth and Jonhson & Lochani for the 1st and 2nd teams respectively.

Aside from the team successes this year, one of our major social achievements was the tour to Enschede, Netherlands over the Christmas and New Year holiday. We had the highest number of members in the history of ICSM Badminton to come on tour! We took part in a 4-day tournament at the University of Twente, with 8 am wake-up calls every day following on from the fun evening antics. Everyone won at least one of their matches throughout the competition and overall we came second (out of 32) in the tournament. The best way to celebrate this great result was the New Year’s party at the University of Twente’s very own Viking’s Bar with everyone dressed up to the theme of “Joyful Japan”: an attempt to stop people from dressing up as exploding nuclear plants or nuclear explosion victims, which, as most people would have guessed, was a fail. We had Japanese characters from the Mario brothers to the two Pikachus which we protected from Team Rocket for the whole night.

It has been a great year and great fun with the club so far. I wish the success continues and best of luck in the remaining matches for all teams! Fingers crossed the women’s team will get promoted to division 1 next season and the mixed team to the premier division!