Well in order to get sponsored, you are going to need to be playing in other tournaments, not just school ones, you should play inside OBA as soon as you can, this will help you gain experience as well as allowing you to Compare your standard of play to the best in the region. You should also get some sort of Junior ranking points for either provencial or national (or both) by playing in OBA sanctioned tournaments. The better you do, the more chance of sponsorship opportunities.
@TheNoob with regards to being sponsored in Canada you deffinetly need to have a provincial ranking for sure, perferably one that is within the top 10 in the province. A national ranking once again that is up there within the top 20 for your catagory/age would be a great help too. Basically the companies want somebody who is preforming well at tournaments making it to quarter finals or higher consistently with allowance for a few exceptions at the provincial level. Once you get to the national level well id say things are a little more lienent because of there being top players from each province playing so even top provincial players can still lose 1st round. anyways back to the point. it all depends on the company your interested in and the various levels of sponsorship they offer, from the low contracts that might only offer percentage off of products to the top level contracts that will give you free equipnment. so all in all you deffinetly need to play OBA sanctioned tournaments and acquire a provincial ranking, once you have that contact the companies your interested in and either they will have an application form that you fill out and submit or you simply sent them your badminton resume (results, ranking, future goals, etc) and they will let you know if theres anything that they can offer you as well as lay down some rules on what they expect you to do for them. Blackknight and Victor are some great canadian companies that dont have super high requirenments, Apacs Canada as well since they dont have sponsored players or many currently. Yonex is one of the harder ones to get though and usually require you to be a top provincial/national level player but dont get discouraged by that its still possible to get something through sponsorship from them. best of luck with it all, train hard and look into all the various other companies that are out there, there are literally tons and alot of them dont have many sponsored players so they will be willing to offer you products to get their name more known.
I was sponsored by Yang Yang through my club for 2 years or so. When QLD badminton association graded me to A grade and i began competing at Open grade level i was then able to get full sponsorship including gear and training included at my club. UNfortunately since then i have been a bit inactive due to my new job and making lifestyle adjustments so i no longer and sponsored but if i make nationals in 2011 ill be looking at getting some new sponsorship again. Just work hard and push forward if you show promise and determination and are pulling decent results clubs/companies will give you the opportunity your looking for.
Thanks for all the information, I think I'll use this year to train and get better and join OBA and play in their santioned tournaments next season. Well we'll see how it goes, Thanks again guys.
