THE A Team started their East Devon Junior Badminton League with a win over Exmouth based Cranford, Exeter based Isca and our very own Queens B Team.

Last year the B Team won the Championship League and were promoted into the Premiership League together with the Queens A Team.

It was therefore always going to be a difficult competition for them. Six of their players were unable to play as they were playing at Bournemouth in a Bronze Junior Challenge competition!

However the B Team showed great courage and there were some great individual performances especially from players who were playing in the league for the first time.

Queens A Team also had a huge challenge as other teams had European Double Champions. This did not deter our players and there were some great team and individual wins which took them to overall victory.

Twenty of Queens Badminton Club players turned our for the event, held at St Luke's School, Exeter.

Simon Brassington captained the A Team and Hannah Preece the B Team. Both did an exceptional job of organising the teams on the day.

Head Coach Helen Ward, was delighted with the result saying: "I feel that the new Badminton England Performance Centre which has taken a lot of hard work to set up but we are starting to show some real results."

Queens Badminton Club have been working hard behind the scenes with Badminton England and Exeter University to develop a Badminton England Performance Centre.

With players ranked in the top 20 in the country and several playing for the county the club continues to go from strength to strength.

NM