A successful summer season for badminton

It’s been another successful summer for KBC, writes Kilcullen Badminton Club PRO Enda O'Neill.

This year on average KBC summer club had between 50 and 60 players per week in the club, making it one of our most successful summers to date. Kilcullen are one of the only clubs that opens its doors in the summer and invites badminton players affiliated to other clubs to come play with us. This shows off our fantastic facilities and great community spirit to the new players and this year we have really benefitted from this.

KBC also managed to get Badminton Ireland’s 2013 Coach of the year Lincoln Nelson into the club to coach. Lincoln started playing badminton at the age of seven and has been playing badminton for 35 years. He moved to Ireland in 1999 and in 2007 he represented Mount Pleasant in the Premier League. In 2007 he also represented Leinster and qualified as a Grade 1 coach. Lincoln came to the club to coach players on Friday nights and held eight coaching sessions on consecutive nights sharing his expertise with 16 players each night.

Lincoln stripped the game back to basics, working on blocking, smashing, dropping, offence, defence and the most important part of the game footwork. Thanks to Lincoln for all his commitment and hard work.

As usual Kilcullen Badminton Club will be partaking in this year’s annual Kilcullen River Festival. KBC have a raft in the raft race but unfortunately I won’t confirm who our nautical wizards are as it would give the other teams an unfair advantage!

KBC will have a skills stall where you can try your luck to win prizes. We'll also be having a cake and book sale stall (we have great bakers but not so good readers in the club!!).

Finally good luck to all who are participating in the Kick-start Tournament which is being held in Dublin. Hopefully we can start our season the way we ended last year, with a few new trophies in the cabinet.