Medway Badminton Association Limited - Development Officer
You may ask why does Medway Badminton have a development officer?
The answer: It was a requirement of the funding Medway Badminton received from Sport England, to update the facilities of the club, that development of badminton would take place both to occupy more court hours and to develop badminton into the community. Development plans were written by Kent Badminton and reviewed by them each year. You can find this years development plan in the downloads section.
In 2005 Medway Junior Badminton achieved Silver Club status, now Premier Club status.
On the 3rd October 2006 Medway Badminton achieved their status ‘Performance and Development Centre’.
Today your development officer can be seen attending meetings with the County Badminton Association Development Group, Medway Community Sports Network, Medway Sports Development Team forums and working parties, Kent Sports Development Officer, Medway 2012 working party, Medway Council schools pe meetings and any other organisations as and when necessary.
Your development officer regularly attends events and promotions where possible to highlight badminton.
Advertising leaflets and flyers have now been produced for the ladies badminton sessions, Medway Badminton and Medway Junior Badminton. Medway Badminton also now has its own banner stand for use in exhibitions and at events. The photography was produced by Michael Wynne and the banner stand was designed by Denise Barnes-Rolf.
Working with Medway Sports Development Unit, Medway Junior Badminton hosts a BISI festival each year. This festival is for school years 3 and 4 children. Last year 16 schools took part, making a total of 96 new youngsters introduced to badminton.
The pilot project for this year was to start an under 11 badminton development cell for Kent Badminton to take interesting youngsters into their under 11 squad. An invitation was sent to all Medway Primary Schools (around 65 schools) asking to send 3 of their talented and co-ordinated youngsters, all in 2007-8 year 3. The play in resulted in a development squad of 8 young players. The aim of this new squad was to join, once a month, with the other new squads round the region of Kent. Out of all the regions in Kent only a small group in Park Langley and us managed to get a squad going.
The ladies sessions on Wednesdays is slowly growing now. After communication with Kent’s Sports Development Officer funding has been secured for a coach to attend the sessions for 32 weeks.
Teacher’s courses have been held each year.
Medway Junior Badminton is increasing in numbers and now run 5 coaching sessions on Saturdays. All coaching sessions are structured to ensure progression is achieved by each junior. Several juniors have now joined senior clubs. One club has been formed specifically for the juniors to enter the Rainham Leagues. This club has entered a team solely of Medway Juniors aged from 15 – 17. It is important that juniors from these coaching sessions feed into adult clubs. This is the future of Medway Badminton.
Coaching is being delivered both in school curriculum time and after school clubs in primary and secondary schools, see the Junior section of this website for more information.
University of Kent students have been sponsored by your development officer to run events at Medway Badminton.
Teacher’s tournaments have been successful and are now being held each year.
Medway Badminton also host an annual event with our local Vineries community. This year a badminton morning of 2 hours was thoroughly enjoyed by the youngsters, helpers and us.
Your development officer delivers an event each year, in the junior coaching sessions, to promote National Badminton Week. This year local schools will also be involved.
If you have any information on groups, schools or clubs who are interested in playing badminton or any information on any events or promotions that I may be interested in attending please email me at hilaryathawes1@aol.com.