YES, we made it !!!!!

This week-end was the most important moment of the season for me and my club, as we were playing the play-offs to access to National Third Division!! (after having finished first in our regional first division)

My club being the club of a 1500 inhabitants village only and having never been in the National Division, this was an enormous task!
It is also the club where I learned to play badminton and have always been playing for up to now, so imagine how important it was to me!!!

Anyway, we left on friday for Lyon with two cars and had to travel SIX hours before arriving there in the evening, the matches were starting on saturday.

We were in a pool of four, and had to finish first of our pool to access to National Third Division.
Each match between two clubs has 9 matches : 3 men's singles, 2 women's singles, 1 men's doubles, 1 women's doubles, 2 mixed doubles (using two courts, so there are always two matches at a time).

Our first match was against the weakest team, their weak link being their girls. We won this one 8-1 (only lost the MD) and it helped getting used to the big hall and relaxing a bit, because we were all quite tense...

But the most difficult match was to come just after, when we met the best team of the pool (they had won the other match 8-1 too).
All the games were very tight and we started even by winning the WD and losing the MD, 1-1...
Though I'm more of a doubles player, I had to be fielded in singles and had prepared specially for that.
The global score being 1-1 when I started my MS match, the outcome of my match was very important for the rest and it was very very tight.
I played as well as I could, fighting really hard to reach every shuttle and ended by winning the first game 15-13 with my partners shouting and cheering like mad behind me, this was great!
(I was also shouting after each point I won of course! )
Then I rushed to a 10-0 lead in the second game before running out of steam, and my opponent started putting higher pressure again to close up the gap to 10-12, before I finally won that 15-10.

After this, we won the first WS in three sets, lost the second WS in three sets too, and same thing for both other MS (one victory and one defeat).

At that moment, the score was 4-3 in our favour, with the two last matches to go : both mixed doubles.

I was playing in the second mixed doubles and when we started our match, our other pair had lost the first game...
Our opponents were a pretty good pair, according to their results, they had been unbeaten all year in their regional championship.
My partner was a 17 year old player, and I was hoping she would hold her nerves as this might well be the decisive match if the other pair lost their match!

... and we played extremely well, upping the pace as much as we could and anticipating our opponent's flat cross court drives...
We took the lead and were never caught up in the first game, which we eventually won 15-11. Meanwhile our other pair was pushing their opponents to three sets.

We maintained the pace and pressure in the second set, it's our male opponent who finally had the most trouble handling the pressure, and we kept our concentration until the last point was scored : 15-8!

One minute earlier, our other pair had just won their match too on the other court and that was it : a 6-3 victory!!!!!

Though we were starting to feel very tired, we still had to play against the third team of the pool, and struggling against fatigue, we managed to win it 8-1, losing the mixed doubles 15-11 in the decisive game, completely exhausted!!

We were wanting to celebrate this GREAT win all night long, but we were so exhausted by all our efforts, that we just finished drinking a few beers at the hotel, then going to bed!!

Wow, anyway this was really a great great week-end for me, so I felt like sharing my experience though most of you probably don't really mind about it of course, so thank you if you've had the patience to read this post until the end!!!

 

Thanks for your words everyone!!!

about the french system, the interclub (team) championships are organized this way :

* at the top, the National Interclubs with all the best national players and many foreigners (including Tracey Hallam, Aamir Ghaffar, Hanny Setiani, etc...).
The National Interclubs are organized in three divisions : First division (twelve teams), Second Division (two groups of twelve teams : East and West group), Third Division (four groups of twelve teams : North, East, West and South groups)

* then, just below the National Third Division, the Regional Interclubs : the number of divisions and teams can be different in each region. There are 22 regions in France.

* then, below the Regional lowest Division, the Departemental Interclubs (approx 100 departements in France...)

We topped our Regional First Division and were playing against the other winners of Regional First Divisions of the South Zone.

Now, next season will be starting in October and we will need to train hard to stay in National Third Division (we'll need to be in the top nine teams, out of twelve).

Bluejeff, I'm not sure I understand your question about professionals?
If it is about individual ranking points, in France there is one "unique" ranking from the beginners to the professionals, and all official matches count in that ranking... However, I am currently quite low in the rankings because I haven't been playing in many tournaments this last year...

Loh, I am still really exhausted tonight, I played three men's singles and three mixed doubles in one day, I couldn't have played any more match!

Anyway, we'll be celebrating at my club tomorrow evening, this was a historical achievement for a small village like this, and badminton is going to be regarded as THE major sport here if we carry on this way!!

Here's a photo of the team in attachment :

 

Our team

From left to right :

Damien, 20 years old, former MD U17 French champion
Ian (that's me), 24 years old, and completely exhausted on the photo!
Julien, 20 years old, couldn't play in the play-offs because of a damn rule,
Colin, 21 years old, my young brother and team captain,
Claudia, 20 years old, our doubles specialist,
Mike, 53 years old, came to complete the team at the last minute in MD, he's Veteran French champion in MD (over 45 category) and also my father,
Anne, 17 years old, my mixed partner,
Guillaume, 19 years old, couldn't play in the play-offs either,
Jessica, 16 years old, singles player and top U17 national player (currently number 7)

 

as you see, the team is rather young (except for my father, who only came for a last minute replacement! ).
I hope we can carry on improving over the years!

By the way, sorry LazyBuddy for giving you false hopes... this topic had nothing to do with Pi Hongyan!

 

Hi Loh, the guy holding the white T-shirt is Julien, I'm standing behind him on the left (I'm the tallest of the team).

My father isn't a badminton professor, but it is him who taught the game to me and my brothers when we were young.
He used to be a good player (and still is for his age), but never really got into coaching... (he prefers playing than coaching)

 

Yes, my father is english and moved to France when he was in his twenties.

However, I was born in Toulouse (south of France) and never moved more than 20 km from Toulouse!

The damn rule : we could only use a limited number of two players who had changed club since last season. We needed all the girls, so the two guys who had changed club couldn't play.
The problem is that this rule didn't exist in our Regional Championship, so we weren't aware of this limitation until last thursday!!! (two days before the matches!)

 

Yes, we will be travelling on much further distances (all south of France) and playing against much better teams, quite a few of them having recruited good foreigners (often from eastern europe).

We will only be banking on our hard work to maintain ourselves in National Division, because our club doesn't have much money so there is no way we can recruit top players... (and this is not our way of seeing things)

In any case, this will be a great experience!!!