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Badminton Club

General

The Badminton Club meets on Monday evenings in the Village Hall between October and April each year. We are a small group of players who enjoy playing in the local Colchester Badminton Federation. We are currently playing in the Men's League and the Mixed League.

History

Although there had been a Badminton Club in the village after WW2, it had not been running for several years when the Club as it is now began in the 1960's. Stourdale Youth Centre in Manningtree used to run a Youth Club on Monday evenings in the Village Hall and when numbers began to dwindle a group of players from Manningtree started to use the main room for badminton. As the number of people attending Youth Club dwindled to two, they decided to play badminton instead and thereafter Monday nights became Badminton Night rather than Youth Club. After several years, Stourdale decided to cut back on the groups in outlying villages and the Badminton Club became independent. In the early 1970's there were so many members that we played on Tuesday as well as Monday evenings. But numbers have dwindled and now we have only the occasional Club Night as we play matches on most Mondays.

Activities

As there are so few of us, we prefer to play in the leagues as we get to play against other people and enjoy the matches, usually at a friendly level. At the end of the 2004-05 season the teams played in the Men's and the Mixed League. The Men's team did really well and came second in their league, which should mean promotion to the higher division for the coming season. The Mixed team had a reasonable season and finished mid table. We now look forward to the new season that starts in September. The fixture meeting is usually held in August when arrangements are made for the coming months. We then have a few club nights to break us in gently for the new season, before the matches start.

Membership

The group who play at the moment are drawn from the surrounding area, although most have connections of some sort with the village. We have a wide age range, from 18 years to over 50. There are currently about 8 men and 4 women playing regularly, and we are always looking for more players. We are self-financing, dividing up the costs between the number of players we have. Unfortunately we do not have the facilities to accommodate beginners or youngsters, but should anyone be interested in playing, please get in touch with me for details.

Contact

Joy Golding - Email address: anjoknitwear @ aol.com

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