FOUR Year 11 students from Queen Elizabeth’s School in Crediton, took part in the National School’s Badminton Championships in April.

Lloyd Skinner, Alex Moir, Jamie Dawe and Luke Clifton travelled to the National Badminton Centre in Milton Keynes in order to represent QE.

In the pool stages the team narrowly beat Reading School, meaning that they were guaranteed to finish in the top six.

The next pool match saw the QE team go 2-0 down to Clayton Hall Academy. However the team pulled together to win the last two doubles games, 21-16 and 21-12 which meant that the boys were guaranteed a top three place!

In the afternoon matches, QE had a very closely fought battle with The John Henry Newman School. Jamie Dawe and Alex Moir played brilliantly and overcame the disruption of the scores being incorrect and play needing to be stopped to correct them, to win 21-15.

The final between QE and Tapton School was a fantastic display of high-quality Badminton.

Alex Moir was playing an injured opponent in the third match and won 21-6.

He was a true sportsman and did not make the experience any more painful than it needed to be for his opponent.

The QE team lost the fourth game 21-11, and won the final match 21-19. Narrowly losing 3-2 to Tapton School.

QE PE teacher, Victoria Williams, who accompanied the team to Milton Keynes along with their Head of Year, Hayley Wood, said: “Second in the country! An amazing weekend and a wonderful result! The boys were a credit to QE, they played with great sportsmanship and dug deep in some extremely close matches.”