Team Northern Ontario remains hopeful for spot on badminton podium despite tough start

Northern Ontario's badminton team had a tough start to its 2024 Ontario Winter Games campaign, but their coach remains hopeful they'll find their way to the podium.

The Northern Ontario Badminton Association (NOBA) squad — made up of 12 players from across the region, including Thunder Bay — lost to both the York Region District Badminton Association, and York Region District Badminton Association, at Superior CVI on Saturday.

As of Saturday afternoon, NOBA was sitting with zero points on the scoreboard.

"We pulled a really tough draw," Kurt Tempelmans Plat, coach of Team Northern Ontario and president of NOBA, said following the morning loss to York. "We're expecting some tough matches, maybe not as many wins as we would like at the end of the day, but I felt that the athletes were really competitive, and something that we tend to do very well in NOBA is be spirited regardless of the win or the loss."

Still, Tempelmans Plat was optimistic about his team's chances at the games.

"We placed third at the last Winter Games," he said. "It was our first medal in 30 years."

"I think it's on people's minds. Can we do it again? I'm a very honest person. I really do think that we can pull off a medal this time, but will not be without a lot of battles to get there."

NOBA covers a very large territory, Tempelmans Plat said, stretching from the North Bay area west to the Manitoba border. There are 12 athletes on the team this year, mostly from North Bay; Sudbury, Thunder Bay, and Manitouwadge are also represented on the roster, however.

One of those local athletes is 16-year-old Kayo Lake, who recently moved to Thunder Bay from Marathon, and has been playing badminton for the last few years.

"I'm a big player on team sports," he said. "I play hockey, volleyball, basketball."

"What I really like about badminton is the individual-ness of it, because I play singles," Lake said. "It's me versus them."

Lake lost his morning game by scores of 21-9 and 21-17 to York's Oliver Chen (the games feature a best-of-three format, first player to 21 wins).

"I was playing an amazing opponent," Lake said. "I've heard he has a lot of accomplishments in the sport, and he was really smart and really hard to read."

"I tried to fight through, tried to get it for our region, but just wasn't able to pull it through in the end."

Lake played doubles Saturday afternoon, teaming up with Fergus Kerr to take on Toronto's Bosco Lai and Ethan Jz Wang; NOBA lost 21-8, and 21-7.

The sport of badminton is growing very quickly. Ian Assing, president of Badminton Ontario — who was at Superior CVI watching the matches on Saturday — said badminton is one of the fastest-growing sports in the province since the COVID-19 pandemic.

"Our numbers in juniors have pretty much doubled in every region," he said. "Even here in Thunder Bay, I'm hearing we need to have more coaching clinics."

Assing said there are a number of reasons for the sport's rapid growth.

"It's always been supported from certain cultural communities, say the Asian community," he said. "Now it's much more than that. The the venues, the players, the families, they're coming from all parts of the world, and it's one of the largest sports around the world, of course."

"We're seeing it reflected because we're multicultural as a as a country."

And the sport is, simply put, exciting. The display at Superior CVI on Saturday was a far, far cry from what happens around a badminton net set up in the back yard.

"It's an overall sport that involves a high level of coordination and speed and reaction time," Assing said. "This sport has the highest-velocity projectile, sometimes it's over 400 kilometres an hour."

"Even at this level here we're watching, Ontario Winter Games, we have some of the highest-level athletes in the game and they're hitting the shuttle very close to those speeds at times."

Eleven-year-old Aaishi Stuti Dutta of the Central Ontario Badminton Association was the youngest player on the court Saturday.

"I've been playing badminton for two years," she said. "It's a special sport."

"I just want to be a champion, really."

Dutta lost her first match against Toronto's Chloe Mak, and then Dutta and partner Erika Lee lost to Joyce Dong and Kennedy Melise Matham of the Western Ontario Badminton Association in doubles play Saturday afternoon.

Dutta said plenty of strategy goes into the games themselves, and hand-eye coordination and the ability to read the opposition are key.

"It's usually about how you think," she said. "If they're tall, I would hit to their body, and if they're my [height], I would make them run or give it to their weakest corner."

Full results from Saturday, and a schedule of Sunday's events, are available on the 2024 Ontario Winter Games website.

Superior Morning8:13Ontario Winter Games special: Team Northern Ontario badminton

<p>When we think of winter sports in northern Ontario, badminton is not the first one that comes to mind. But it's on the rise right across the province.&nbsp; And the north is no exception. Team Northern Ontario will be taking to the courts at Superior CVI this weekend as part of the Ontario Winter Games. Kurt Tempelmans Plat is the team's coach. He’s also the president of the Northern Ontario Badminton Association, and he’s based in North Bay. Kayo Lake is one of the players. He's based here in Thunder Bay.</p><p><br></p><p><br></p>