The Yorkton Elementary School Sports Association held their city wide badminton tournament last Tuesday afternoon at the Gloria Hayden Community Centre.
According to YESSA president Mark Schendel, it was another one of those events where there was an awful lot of people in the same place at the same time, most of them doing the same thing.
"There were approximately 200 matches played in total for the three gyms yesterday," said Schendel via email following the crowning of the winners.
The tournament was the result of the two local school boards putting their heads together in order to host one big city-wide tournament.
"Each school sends 16 players, tops," notes Schendel.
Categories included boys' singles, girls' singles, boys doubles, girls doubles and mixed doubles.
Schendel, a teacher at MC Knoll, as well as YESSA president, noted that 50 kids from MC Knoll tried out to play on the badminton team.
For Tuesday's tournament, teams were divided into pools.
There were five teams in each pool. The top two teams wool advance to the playoffs.
"I am very proud of the skill set," says Schendel halfway through the tournament.
He added that the collaboration between the two school boards is evident when the tournament requires three gymnasiums to hold all 200 games that were played within a very short time frame.
"Both school divisions (the Good Spirit School Division) and the Christ the Teacher Catholic School Division), take immense pride in this."
It allows "students to display their talents."
The Gloria Hayden Community Centre, Ecole St. Michael's and the MC Knoll Stars used their facilities to house all the games, which saw over 200 games.
Among the winners: in boys singles, Nick Payne of Yorkdale Central Public School won top spot. Emma Teneycke won first in girls' singles, representing Columbia School.
Yorkdale added more medals to the trophy case when Caleb Bymak and Derrick Budz won the boys' doubles category.
The medals for girls' doubles and mixed doubles all went to the MC Knoll Knights.
Brett Lindsay and Lacey Senchuk won in the girls' category.
Halle Harris and Carson Welke won mixed doubles.
Next for YESSA sports is the basketball season which Schendel says starts in two and a half weeks' time.
For more pictures view Photo Gallery.
