Drop Shot Winter Tournament

Last Saturday (04/01/2020) a dozen or so members attended the annual BC Drop Shot winter tournament in Den Haag. A long yet gratifying day for some, while perhaps a little bitter sweet for others (naming no names) the tournament boasted an impressive (for me) level of play: the vast majority of us only daring to compete in the lowly division C. However, with all of us stuffed in the same division inter club conflict was all but inevitable… 

A lot of us arrived around 9AM and started play soon after, most of us enjoying some level of success. From the perspective of it being only my second tournament, the origanisation was silky smooth at least in comparison with the [redacted] tournament a little more than a month ago.

It was in the afternoon when things started to heat up, in particular the mixed doubles finals in which was an all USSR affair with Dian and Mathijs vs Nick and Lulu. Which proved to be a nail biting 3 setter but not without comedic relief when Mathijs unloaded a serve directly into the back of Dian’s head. Nonetheless it was Dian and Mathijs who prevailed. 

After a somewhat meagre dinner we got to witness some high level play with games between the BC DropShots team 1 vs BV AviAir Almere. However, most  us were drawn away by a rather obnoxious kid with a horn, tooting away after every point.

Later tensions heated again when Kevin and Ashwin edged out Mathijs and Remco to get to the male doubles finals by only a couple of points: this tournament operated under a ranking system based on cumulative ratio between won and lost points rather than a more typical bracket system, meaning this battle was probably lost much earlier in the day when greater point dividends could have been made against weaker opponents.

In this final Kevin and Ashwin faced an intergenerational battle, whose opponents -as we later learned- had a combined age of a cool 100 years, with one having 44 years of badminton experience. The game was close, reaching 3 sets. But in the end the day was won by the oldies, proving experience really is king.

Then is was the prize ceremony in which many members proceeded to make bank. In the women’s singles Irene came second with Lulu coming first, in the mens singles Remco got second place, then in the mixed doubles Nick and Lulu came second with Mathijs and Dian first, and finally in the men’s doubles Kevin and Ashwin came second. Success! 

Written by: Owen Clark