Three R.F. Staples badminton players are headed to Lethbridge May 2-3 for the provincial tournament.
Honey Tkachyk in the senior girls singles division, and Emily Clark and Kaitlyn Comeau in the junior girls doubles event qualified for provincials by posting strong results at the April 16 zone tourney in Edmonton.
Tkachyk won gold in her event, while Clark and Comeau took silver, said coach Jon Radke. Normally only the first-place finishers in doubles qualify for provincials, he said, but since the gold medallists can’t make it, the R.F. Staples team will take their place.
Sending three athletes to provincials is right around the average when it comes to the number of players the school sends to provincials, Radke said. Even so, it’s difficult to predict how well they’ll do in Lethbridge.
“Provincials are really tough,” he said.
In singles, he explained the athletes are divided up, with players who are professionally coached and play club badminton in one pool and those who play more recreationally — such as Tkachyk — in another pool.
“She’ll be more on an equal standing with them,” Radke said.
Given how well Tkachyk rolled to her gold at zones —fighting off a foot injury and not facing a challenge until her gold-medal match — he’s confident she’ll do well.
“The fact she was able to win gold at zones despite her injury is pretty remarkable,” Radke said.
Doubles, on the other hand, is not subdivided, meaning Clark and Comeau will face opponents with varying skill levels. However, he’s confident they’ll put up a good fight given how much they’ve grown as a unit since the season started.
“They’ve improved a lot in the last couple of weeks here, seeing as this is the first time they’ve ever played together,” he said.
The girls were only three of the eight athletes the school sent to the zone tournament.
Joining them in Edmonton were Brett Kaliel and Sierra Lusson in senior mixed doubles, Patrick Frose in single boys singles, Kayla Olsen in senior girls singles and Evan Woynorowski in intermediate boys singles.
Among the athletes who didn’t advance to provincials, Radke said Frose’s performance — bronze in his division — stood out, primarily because Frose is an intermediate-age player.
“That’s very good for him to achieve bronze playing in a level above his age category,” he said.
“That’s the best I’ve ever seen him play. He was just fantastic.”
The eight athletes who headed to Edmonton earned their spots at zones with strong performances at the April 14 regional tournament in Westlock.
A total of eight different schools sent athletes to the regional tournament, taking over six courts at R.F. Staples and another eight at the Westlock Rotary Spirit Centre.
R.F. Staples fielded a full team of 30 players.
“I’m definitely pleased with how they performed overall,” Radke said. “I know they all gave their best effort; there’s no question about that.”
He sets his sights on sending more players to zones than any other school from the region, a mark the team fell slightly short of this year, tying two other schools sending eight players forward.
St. Mary School had one athlete at the tournament, but he did not advance to zones.
While many R.F. Staples students, about a quarter of the team, moved on to zones, Radke said he would have liked to see more.
“I think that on the whole, we were expecting a few more, especially from some of the doubles,” Radke said. “We’ve historically struggled in doubles against other teams. We do stronger in singles.”
The team struggled a bit in some singles categories, too, but he chalked that up to the strength of the competition rather than any particular weaknesses in his players.
“We’ll take that into consideration for next year,” he said. “We know some categories are going to be tougher to play in and we’ll have to come prepared for that.”
• With files from Doug Neuman.
