2011 Canadian International Challenge

This was my last International tournament of 2011 and it was the Canadian International Challenge out in Moncton, New Brunswick December 12-17th but I was out there December 11-15th. This tournament is my last of the year and counts towards Olympic qualification points so it attracted a decent amount of people. For this tournament I was up against 5th seed Stephan Wojcikiewicz of Canada 1st round.


Tournament Venue.

The good news was that I could hold a racquet again and even play some simple shots, clears, drops, forehand lifts, etc. The bad news was I could not constantly smash, play backhands, hit drives or play backhand lifts effectively due to no strength in my hands tendons. Playing against such an amazing talented player as Stephan proved incredibly hard and something that I was not able to do well. I played as hard as I could with the shots that I could hit but it was just near impossible to win points against him. I ended up getting crushed but am happy with how things went and know even more what to work on for the next year. I did receive a decent amount of points for a 1st round loss still which will boost my world ranking in the next week to somewhere around 400th in the world.


Rock Tape provided basic support but didn't help the 3 tendons in my hand too much =(

Clip of Me Vs. Stephan Wojcikiewicz [5]
Match Clip

I would like to achieve better tournament results in 2012 and will be working hard to do that. I am happy with where I have gotten in playing/training badminton for the past 4 and a half years. There is still a huge gap that I need to close with the players that have been playing/training for at least 10 years and started when they were young. We will see what 2012 has in store for me what tournaments I will play and how the year will pan out for me. I will finish off Christmas break and 2011/ beginning of 2012 doing footwork every day alternating between no weight vest and a weight vest. This will allow my hand to heal further and hopefully be ready in January when group training starts back up.

Until then I have some finals to write one Friday (tomorrow) and Monday December 19th. And will probably post a year in reflection blog, well I will try to do my best to post one up. A lot of great things have happened this year as well a lot of bad things too, but will dwell into that later.