Stowmarket Junior Club was founded in October 2006 assisted by a grant from the Local Network Fund. Six members of the adult club undertook their Level 1 Coaching Award and three members successfully completed their Level 2 Coaching Award to support the juniors at the club.

Membership of the junior club is open to juniors of all abilities; the only restriction that we apply is to keep the number of juniors members low enough to ensure that they are safe when on court during the sessions and receive an appropriate amount of coaching.
During the first year the club met on Thursday evenings at Mid Suffolk Leisure Centre and hosted a successful tournament at the end of the season. Members of the club also took part in tournaments throughout the county gaining valuable experience of competetive play.

The success of the club meant that we had to try and hire more courts to enable more new members to join. In September the Junior Club began the 07 - 08 season on Saturday mornings at Mid Suffolk Leisure Centre with the juniors being divided into two groups that meet between 9.00am - 10.00am for younger / beginners and 10.15am - 12.00noon for older / experienced juniors.

Junior Tournament April 2011
We will be hosting our annual tournament on Sunday April 3rd 2011. This year the event will take the form of a mixed championship and we welcome you to take part. Further details and an entry form are available from clicking on the link below.


Tournament2011.doc

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2010 - 2011 Season
Junior club will start for the 2010 - 2011 season on Saturday 11th September. If you are interested in joining the club or would like more details about the junior section please contact Janine Simonds 07742 012776



09 - 10 Junior Season

The junior club started the 09-10 season with yet another full membership and several on the waiting list keen to come. We participated in the U13s, U15s and U17’s league meets, which aims to give children who are not in the main county squads the chance to compete with all the other teams in the region. The U13’s came 1st, U15s came 2nd, U17s came 4^th (our U17s team were all U15yrs) and  Stowmarket won overall – 1^st out of 9 teams.

Our junior members also represented our club in every junior tournament that was held during the season and were particularly successful in the Suffolk BA Championships where Ryan Newcombe won the SBA U13s in the singles and doubles, Louise Christopher and James Adderson won the U17’s mixed, Louise was runner up in the U17s girls doubles, James Adderson was runner up in the U17’s boys . Craig Newcombe was Runner up in the U12s and U11s singles and won the U12s boys doubles SBA tournament. Well done to Isabel Dunn who was runner up in the U12s girls doubles and in the mixed with Craig too.

In the U15s tournament we were congratulated by the committee on having the most players competing. Harry Simonds and Ryan Newcombe got to the semi-finals in the doubles and Ryan was runner up in the Singles final. Also well done to Isabel Lucas and Ryan Newcombe who attend some advanced training run by some of the top coaches from the region, to help to improve their games.

We also entered a team into the Abbeygate Junior tournament and came joint 2^nd place and several of our players had never played in a tournament before so that was a brilliant result.

Also we had club players representing Mid-Suffolk in the Suffolk Youth Games tournament.

At Christmas we held a fun in-house tournament and at the end of the season we organised another in-house tournament, which every member turned up to play in. Once again, our Annual Junior Tournament was a success and our Stowmarket teams won Gold in all 3 age groups, bronze in both U15s and U13s.

All the Feedback Forms sent to players and parents, that have been returned, have been extremely positive, proving that we are continuing to offer young people a fun and proper environment to learn to play badminton.

We have once again been accredited with Clubmark accreditation for this year and are in the process of renewing several of our coaching qualifications.