There’s a new men’s singles badminton powerhouse in town, and he wasted no time claiming his first Prince Rupert title.
David Yuan, one of the province’s top players and coming to the North Coast from Vancouver, took the second annual Prince Rupert Badminton Tournament men’s singles championship over Jordan Truong on Sunday afternoon, highlighting a tremendous weekend of extremely high-calibre badminton action.
The participating players hailed from Prince Rupert, Terrace and even a couple dozen came from Prince George, including president of Badminton B.C. and women’s singles champion, Lisa Davison.
“The volunteer base [in Prince Rupert] is fabulous. There’s lots of really keen people intent on making a tournament happen ... Like us in Prince George and anything north of Kelowna, there isn’t a dedicated badminton facility, but you can see we have the same level of really strong players – just more isolated,” said Davison, who runs a junior club in Prince George and brought over 25 kids to the tourney.
Yuan, a former assistant coach at the prestigious ClearOne Badminton Centre in Richmond and former head coach of the Capilano University Badminton team, impressed audiences with his drop shots, powerful forehands and deceitful backhanded swings that had his opponents sprinting to the wrong side of the court.
For young Truong, it was all he could do to try and outpace the experienced veteran in their finals match.
“Jordan is a young, rising player and he has a lot of strength and technique. I think right now, he needs a lot of high-intensity training to refine his skills and strength because right now I’m a lot older than him. So in terms of experience and technique, I think I’m a little bit better and this is why I was able to take advantage on a lot of shots. If he’s able to continue to practice, I can see that he has a bright future,” said Yuan of his opponent.
“I think my best shots today were a lot of slices, cross-court drop shots ... I made him dig birds a lot.”
Beginning Sunday’s matches at “Court 2” - centre court for the civic centre’s gymnasium in front of numerous spectators were the mixed doubles finals, and Davison and Jonathan Goodkey were victorious over Yuan and Katherine Crossley in a fine match.
Following their tilt was a high-octane and extremely tight two games to one victory for Julian Callangan and Thai Pham over Yuan and Steven Liu, with both teams working closely in sync with each other to try and outlast their talented opponents.
Then, Prince George’s Clara Froling and Olivia McClair took down Rachael Ernst and Kathy Liu for the women’s doubles championship, while Davison was victorious in women’s singles over fellow club player McClair in a match that had spectators on the edge of their seats in a hushed atmosphere inside the gymnasium.
Yuan finished the day with his men’s singles win over Truong, though the young up-and-comer got his title in the under-19 boys’ division, beating Alex Santos in the final.
In the under-19 girls’ championship, Leona Truong defeated Brielle Cooke while Kenadi Stephen and Steve Pye grabbed the under-19 mixed doubles title, topping Cooke and Zak Simpson.
Jordan Ho and Braydon Watson claimed the under-19 boys’ doubles title, with Jarin Davison and Simpson coming in second.
For the under-19 girls’ doubles champions, Clare Froling and Diane Ayson took out Nicole Wilkes and Kenadi Stephen.
Rounding out the weekend’s winners was Brandon Mah claiming victory over Brendan Eshom in the under-15 division on Sunday.
“You’ve got some great knowledge [here]. David [Yuan]’s got some great knowledge, the Lius have some great knowledge – there was a real learning curve, but everybody was keen,” Davison added before departing back to Prince George with her junior crew.
Organizer Kathy Liu thanked the volunteers and executive committee for organizing the grand-scale tournament, and mentioned the third iteration will come next year.