Fournier silver at badminton provincials

Monsignor McCoy’s Jordyn Fournier won silver at the Alberta Schools Athletic Association badminton championships this past weekend.

At Red Deer, Fournier went 1-2 in the junior girls round robin, but made her move in the Category B playoffs — which award medals just as Category A does, largely enabling club and non-club players something to shoot for. Two wins got her to the B final against an opponent from Edmonton’s W.P. Wagner school. But she dropped a narrow 2-1 (23-21, 15-21, 21-15 ) decision, still taking second.

Alas, two other singles players and one mixed doubles team from the Medicine Hat area did so well in round robin play they ended up in the tougher Category A playoffs. And all of them — eventually — met their match.

James Nguyen, the Vietnamese exchange student at Hat High who impressed with city and zone-level wins, went 3-0 in the round robin, then won his first playoff match. But Calgary’s Brandon Tang dispatched Nguyen 2-0 (21-13, 21-19) in the Category A senior boys semifinal, then won gold. Nguyen, then fell 2-1 (21-11, 6-21, 21-19) to a player from northwestern Alberta in the third-place game.

McCoy’s Sierra Zukowski, who won medals each of the last two years in Category B, was 21 in round robin play and thus had to play in Category A Saturday. She lost a quarter-final to the eventual bronze medalist.

Eagle Butte’s mixed doubles teams had mixed results. Grade 10’s Triston Duchshcerer and Lexie Waldbauer posted a 2-1 round robin record but fell in the quarter-finals of Category A. Grade 12’s Trevor Mickey and Katie Arnott went 0-3 in the round robin and were eliminated in Category B playoffs.