Clackmannanshire Council Online

P6/7 Primary Badminton Championships

A total of 70 school children from nine primary schools recently took part in the area's annual schools qualifying badminton tournament. The Council works in partnership with the Central Schools Badminton Group and Badminton Scotland to create a competitive pathway where pupils can qualify from their local event to a regional event and onto the National Championships in April 2015.

Lornshill and Alloa Academy played host to the boys and girls events respectively. Primary schools had entered their top four players in the singles and their top four pairs in the doubles.

All children played a minimum of four matches in either singles or doubles as they first played in groups before the top players progressed into the knockout stages. The boys singles event was highly competitive with a very high standard of play on show. Four different schools were represented by the time the event reached the semi-final stages with Logan Downie from Menstrie beating Aidan Gallagher from Tillicoultry and Alasdair Finlay from Strathdevon beating Ben Kay from Redwell. The boys finals matches were very close with long rallies and great shots on score but Aidan took 3rd place from Ben and Logan from Menstrie beat Alasdair 15-4; however the score did not reflect how close the match was.

The four semi finalists in the girls singles event were Caitlyn Morrison and Iona McMurray from Tillicoultry, Anya Coulter from Alva Primary School and Melissa McGarva from Menstrie Primary. After two closely fought semi-finals, Iona beat Caitlyn to clinch 3rd place and Melissa took the girls singles title after beating Anya in the final 21-6. Congratulations to Menstrie Primary on their double singles success taking both titles!

All the singles events took place in the morning and more pupils joined their team mates in the afternoon for the doubles competitions. Once again there was a very high standard of play with many games being hard fought matches.

In the boys doubles Logan Downie and Cameron Hale from Menstrie Primary won the final against Ben Kay and Angus Young from Redwell Primary to take the title. Aidan Gallagher and Dylan Stewart took the bronze medal. The girls doubles was a very close event with Caitlyn Morrison and Iona McMurray from Tillicoultry Primary pairing up and taking the title. Heather Thomson and Anya Coulter from Alva Primary took second with Arden Bruce and Brooke McDonald taking the bronze medals.

The event was supported by 10 secondary school sports leaders who spent the day refereeing and officiating all the matches. A huge thank you to all of them for making the event a success.

The following pupils will now represent Clackmannanshire and their schools as part of 'Team Clacks' in the Regional Primary Badminton Championships in February 2015. Here they will face the top qualifiers from the Stirling Council and Private Schools local events.