Oceania Badminton Championships at North Harbour

Oceania Badminton Championships Hosted at North Harbour

The X-TRM Oceania Badminton Championships get underway on Thursday this week at the X-TRM North Harbour Badminton Centre, with junior and open events hosted over the course of the next week starting with individual Championships from the 12th to 15th followed by the Junior Team Championships from the 16th to 18th February.

Badminton New Zealand CEO Joe Hitchcock has laid out the welcome mat to all involved in the event.

“It is fantastic to have international badminton in New Zealand so early in 2015 and we are looking forward to hosting players, coaches and officials from our Oceania neighbours. This is a great opportunity for both our junior and senior players to compete at the same event and an excellent lead in to the upcoming Mitre 10 Mega Waikato International and our premier international event, the SKYCITY New Zealand Open in late April.”

New Zealanders will feature in the seedings of a number of the events, including top billing for Oliver Leydon-Davis (Waikato) and Kevin Dennerly-Minturn (Auckland) in the men’s doubles and Maika Phillips and Anona Pak (North Harbour) in the mixed doubles. This is Anona’s first tournament back after rupturing her Achilles tendon in July last year, the pair finished runner-up at the 2014 New Zealand Championships prior to the injury.

Leydon-Davis has been in Taiwan of late, training with his new X-TRM team for the past month and has returned to New Zealand specifically for the Oceania Championships. While here the Glasgow Commonwealth Games rep will also play mixed doubles with Danielle Tuhuri (nee Danielle Barry). Waitakere’s Tuhuri played in the 2010 Commonwealth Games team and with partner Emma Chapple (Counties Manukau) is seeded second in the women’s doubles at the Oceania Champs.

No New Zealanders are seeded in the open singles events but current New Zealand champion Luke Charlseworth (Waitakere) will hope to cause a few upsets in the men’s draw.

On the Junior side of the tournament sadly one of New Zealand’s brightest prospects has had to withdraw before the tournament begins, with top seed Nicco Tagle (North Harbour) not progressing quickly enough from his knee dislocation suffered last season to play at North Harbour this week.

In Tagle’s absence New Zealand’s best hopes might lie with Daxxon Vong (Auckland), the New Zealand Junior Champion from 2014. Another to watch will be young Oscar Guo (North Harbour), as the current holder of the New Zealand U17, U15 and Australasian U17 titles, 14 year old Oscar will be watched with great interest.

On the Junior Women’s singles side of the draw, New Zealand’s best hopes lie with current New Zealand Junior champion Deborah Yin (North Harbour) and triple New Zealand U17 champion in 2014 Sally Fu (Auckland) – although Sally does run into top seed and world junior number 29 Alice Wu (AUS) in the second round.

For more information on the X-TRM Oceania Badminton Championships, including draws, seeding lists and tournament updates, CLICK HERE

X-TRM Open and Junior Oceania Championships
X-TRM North Harbour Badminton Centre

Thursday 12 to Wednesday 18 February

Schedule:

Juniors – Thursday, Friday, Saturday from 10am.

Open – Thursday, Friday from 5pm

Semi-finals Junior and Open Saturday from 5pm

Finals Junior and Open Sunday from 2pm

X-TRM Oceania Junior Team Championship

Monday 16, Tuesday 17 Feb, from 10am and 5pm

Wednesday 18 from 10am

Entry is free to all spectators

ends

© Scoop Media