About Royal City Badminton

Club History

The Royal City Badminton Club has been in existence for over 40 years. It originated as a small group of tournament players looking to play more through the week. In the mid 1970s, games were held at the Armories and at several high schools in Guelph (Westwood, Centennial CVI and College Heights) and membership consisted of 10-15 adults.

Over time, the club became more organized and expanded its membership to include youths. In 1984, when the first club newsletter was distributed, the club consisted of 40 adult members (membership fee: $30). The following year, Junior players (age 15-18) were invited to join for $20. At this time, the first coaching clinic was held by Norm Buck. In 1986, children as young as ten were invited to play on selected evenings. With a growing number of volunteers in the late 80s and early 90s to assist with various club functions, the club rapidly evolved. The very first club championship was held at the end of the 1989-90 season.

By 1994, membership had risen to 73 members (adult fee $35) and 3 members received their Level 1 NCCP coaching certification.

From 1989-1996, inter-league play was run with Cambridge, Kitchener, Erin, Elora and Guelph. Badminton skills continued to improve, particularly among the club's youth. In 1996, 10 club juniors qualified for District 10, with 5 of these players moving on to CWOSSA. Ladies junior doubles placed 1st and 4th at CWOSSA.

The addition of designated court supervisors in the late 90s was a pivotal change to facilitate more organized play. Around this time, another marked event was the merging of Centennial Community Badminton Club and Guelph Badminton Club with Royal City Badminton with club play taking place at Centennial High School. By 2001, membership had soared to 109 players. Royal City Badminton seemed to be gaining more and more momentum.

However, in 2002 the School Board imposed a 741% increase in court rental fees. Membership fees were forced to increase to $110/adult. As a result, membership numbers dropped to 94 and continued to plummet to only 74 members the following season. In 2004, fees increased again to $125 and club membership dropped to 62. Despite this setback, the club managed to stay afloat with its dedicated team of volunteers and several key milestones took place. RCB's web site went live for the first time on August 10, 2004. Club tournaments increased to 3 per season and the club championship was re-introduced after a ten year hiatus.

Finally, after several years of protest, some reprieve in gym usage was achieved in 2005. Membership fees were lowered by 28% resulting in a noted increase to 94 members. This same season, the first summer adult badminton play was organized by George Spence and held at the Evergreen Centre. In addition, the first student badminton summer skills camp "Smash Camp" was organized by Jeff Millard. The club is now operating at maximum capacity (120 members) with a 9-member volunteer executive team. A Ladder Board was introduced in 2011 to create a more organized system of play.

Looking to the future, the club hopes to provide more and more coaching for beginner players, especially for young members. To work towards this goal, the club provided financial support between 2009 and 2012 for six members to complete their Level 1 NCCP coaching certification (technical component).

Starting in the fall of 2012, Jeff Millard organized designated nights for coaching for any interested players.
 

Line Judging

In 2010 the Guelph Royal City Badminton Club (RCBC) received an invitation from the Badminton Ontario to recruit Officials to help with line judging in the 2015 Pan Am Games. The games had recently been awarded to the City of Toronto.  The idea was bounced around between George Spence, Jeff Millard and Dave Wrathall and as usual, anything badminton related we jumped in with both feet.

The three of us took and passed the training in September 2010 and started our Line Judging careers. Things seemed to be moving along just fine and we officiated at the 2011 O.F.S.S.A. badminton championships, an U19 high performance badminton event in Stratford and then our first ever taste of international play at the Toronto Open.
It was not until 2012 we started to notice a breakdown in support and assignments.

Early in February 2013, Jeff and George were lucky enough to represent Waterloo- Wellington (District 26) at the Seniors Games in Huntsville. There we met Warren Brownlee, one of the principal organizers of officiating for the Ontario Badminton Association. He explained some of the problems in the Ontario Badminton Association with under funding and an almost total reliance upon volunteers. They had however, now attempted to reorganize as Badminton Ontario but each badminton district within Ontario had to start over and organize their own certification and put forth a team.

RCBC headed the effort to get things back on track and we organized our own training in the fall of 2013. An initial group of 17 from all over south western Ontario (Western Ontario Badminton Organization – WOBA) took the training and we started to acquire the necessary experience.

Out of this came the “Guelph Group of Seven” Jeff Millard, George Spence, Dave Wrathal , Shannon Nguyen all from RCBC and Ross Langlands, Tuan La and Lloyd Leblanc of the Evergreen Seniors Badminton Club. Before the Pan Am games we had to do some practical training. 

The Guelph Group of Seven with Michelle Li at the Pan Am championships 2014 Left to right; Michelle Li next to a larger than life poster of herself, Michelle is ranked #1 in North America and #14 in the world in Ladies Singles. Jeff Millard, Dave Wrathall, Shannon Nguyen, George Spence, Ross Langlands, Lloyd Le Blanc. Tuan La.
 

We officiated at the O.F.S.A.A. championships, an U19 high performance event  and the international play at the Toronto Open We are about to take the final and biggest step towards completing our training. This would be the Pan-AM Badminton Championships in Markham with some 11 counties from the Western Hemisphere competing.

The 2015 Pan-Am Games to be held in July 2015 and the entire tournament was played on 3 courts so it was non-stop for 2 days and Jeff and George volunteered to do double shifts both Saturday and Sunday. We did some 20 matches over the 2 days, and were pretty tired. Monday was the start of the quarter finals so most of us did only 4 or 5 matches and got to watch some amazing games from the centre front 2 rows. Tuesday was the start of the semi-finals so only 2 matches a day and one match for each for the finals. 

There were a total of 73 line judging officials for the games so the Guelph group of seven was about 10% of the total.
This was an amazing experience for our Guelph Group of Seven.

After this we did the World Junior Championship also in Markham and for this event we were joined by Greg Staciwa and Kirk Jones for RCBC. We also officiated at the World Dwarf Games at the U of G, several more Toronto Opens and the Ignite Badminton League tournaments as well as the Canadian Masters Open Championship in Burlington.