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St. Anne’s earns first medal in WOSSAA badminton thanks to Seaforth cousins
St. Anne’s capped off a successful junior badminton season last week with two top-five finishes at WOSSAA
By Ben Forrest
Friday May 09, 2008
St. Anne’s capped off a successful junior badminton season last week with two top-five finishes at WOSSAA, including the first WOSSAA badminton medal in school history.
Gr. 10 students Cassidy Flanagan and Connie Finlayson, both of Seaforth, lost their first match of the day but rebounded to beat a long list of other opponents, earning a silver medal.
“I was really proud of the way they played,” said coach Adam Suski.
“This is the second year that they’ve to WOSSAA. Last year they didn’t win a game, and this year they started the tournament with a loss, but then rebounded really quickly and won a bunch of games in a row to make it to the final. So I was really happy with the way they rebounded after the first game.”
Competition began at 8:30 a.m. and lasted until at least 4 p.m., something the girls admit took a toll on them.
“It was crazy,” said Flanagan in a May 2 interview. “My legs were killing me.”
“We didn’t have any time to go across the street and eat, because it was … back to back games,” added Finlayson.
Still, both were pleased with the way things turned out, and tried to enjoy themselves in the gold medal game.
“If we take it too seriously, we get in fights, and we didn’t want to go through that,” said Finlayson. “We had fun and just played our best.”
Said Flanagan, “It was our last game, so we wanted to make the best of it.”
The two are cousins, and played six different sports together at St. Anne’s this year. They consider themselves to be “more like sisters now,” and admit that when it comes to badminton, they have trouble playing with other partners.
“We’ve tried playing with different people, but it just doesn’t work,” said Finlayson. “We have to play together.”
Another St. Anne’s doubles team, composed of Gr. 9 students Anna Keller and Cortni Blanchard, managed a fifth-place finish at WOSSAA, following a first-place finish at the Huron-Perth tournament.
“They were three points away from coming in third, and they lost in a ridiculous game, so they did well as well,” said Suski.
He added that Flanagan and Finlayson’s experience may explain their success at WOSSAA this season.
“I think the experience last year helped them to be familiar with the type of competition that they would get at WOSSAA,” he said.
“Badminton, as opposed to other sports in high school, [has] just one division, so we’re playing against schools that are three or four times the size of St. Anne’s,” he added. “The competition level is considerably higher than at Huron-Perth. So while the Gr. 9’s did really well, they just weren’t quite used to playing against that type of competition every game.”
On the whole, however, Suski considers the 2008 season to have been a good one for St. Anne’s.
“We captured the Huron-Perth title again, and for the first time – I think in St. Anne’s history – we had two teams in the top five,” he said. “It was a very enjoyable season.”
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