Monash dominate Badminton Squad

Thursday 19 March

Following on from the Beijing Olympics, a new program was set up by Badminton Australia to establish a new squad, which will lead Australia towards Dehli 2010 and London 2012.

In November 2008, Badminton Australia conducted a national trial featuring over 70 top players from Australia. Following the trials, a total of 15 men and 15 women were selected to form the new National Squad.

Five of the National squad players selected are current Monash students. Congratulations to Ann-Louise Slee (2nd year Pharmacy), Kelvin Yuen (3rd Year Commerce/Law), Saliya Gunaratne (3rd Year Commerce/Eco), Jason Tan (2st Year Business), and Brendan Chu (1st Year Commerce).

All players shone through with flying colours at the end of the week long trials. Several other Monash players also undertook the trials but just missed the cut.

All players (except Brendan, being his 1st year) competed for Monash at last years Australian University Games and assisted the University to achieve the 2 Gold medals for the Mens and Womens Team events.

The National squad currently trains 5 times a week. As Badminton Australia together with all the coaching and support staff are based in Melbourne, most of the squad members especially those selected from other States have relocated to Melbourne.

Players are now required to compete in National and International individual tournaments to accumulate and improve on their world rankings, and from time to time a selected team from the squad will be chosen to represent Australia. The first assignment will be the World Mixed Teams Championship held in Guangzhou, China in May 2009.