Badminton-Betsy and Low Zil Ver singles champions |06 September 2004

Sponsored by Zil Ver Company, the competition had for singles champions Thelma Betsy (female) and Alan Low (male) who both pocketed R400.

With most of the country’s senior players on hand to see if their places on the country’s national team can be challenged, Betsy, 14 and a secondary three student at the Mont Fleuri school, played two good sets of badminton and needed a tie-break to overcome Danielle Jupiter 2-1 (11-2, 7-11, 11-4).

“I’m happy I won. I didn’t expect to win, but was determined after having grabbed the first set pretty easily,” said Betsy, who added that she wants to be a very good player and win something internationally.

In the boys’ final, Alan Low, an adolescent of multiple talents, had no trouble against Joel Albert, winning 2-0 (11-0 11-2).

“Joel made life easy for me in the final. He is capable of playing very good badminton, but I don’t know what happened to him,” said 15-year-old Low, who has now stopped swimming to concentrate on badminton, besides being a musician.

Both the ladies’ and boys’ singles were contested by eight players. While the singles winners won R400, the runners-up got R250 and third place finishers Thyra Laporte and Kevin Ghislain won R150.

The doubles – boys and girls – were played on a league format and the champions were known even before Saturday’s singles finals.

For the boys, Mervin Ernesta and Kevin Ghislain triumphed after three victories in as many matches for a sum of R300.

The girls’ doubles winners were Thyra Laporte and Cynthia Course who also won all their three games for a prize of R300.

G. G.