SDSSAA athletes returned home with a pair of non-championship flight medals, but after that, victories were fairly scarce for the local contingent as play wrapped up Saturday at the 2019 OFSAA Badminton Championships in North Bay.
Rina Nagashima (St. Benedict Catholic Secondary School) topped the charts for the Sudbury representatives, returning home with an antique bronze in the Girls Division "B" Singles play after posting a record of 4-3 at the event.
An opening round win over Hannah Knier (Thomas Stewart SS - Peterborough) was followed by a loss to Jacqueline Cheung (Richmond Hill HS), as the NOSSA champion found herself bumped down to Division "B".
Once there, Nagashima posted back to back victories, advancing to the "B" semi-final before falling again, this time to Gena Huang (KCVI - Kingston). With no wiggle room remaining, Nagashima downed Denise Pang (Markville SS) for a second time, before meeting Shankari Sivachandran (King Academy - Richmond Hill) in the bronze medal match-up and settling for fourth place.
Meanwhile, the Marymount Academy doubles team of Mackenzie Watkins and Angelina Lam added a Division "C" bronze medal to the silver hardware they captured in the same bracket last year in Windsor, completing a very busy tournament with a record of 6-3, including five straight wins to close things off.
Their path to the podium was made more difficult when the veteran pairing followed up a triumph in round one over Emma Zhang/Ava Zhansari (Pickering College), with three straight setbacks.
Once in Division "C", the locals would not lose again, capping off their impressive streak with victories over Amanda Marshall and Li Na Chen (Georgetown District HS) in the semi-final, and Lynna Li and Annie Liu (University of Toronto Schools) in the divisional grand finale.
Both remaining local doubles teams managed to hit the victory column once apiece, with Miguel Paquette and Karine Boucher of Collège Notre-Dame upending Baily Giroux and Andréa Carrière (Alliance - Iroquois Falls), while Eric Dissanayake and Ethan Rogers of Lo-Ellen bested Kris Barrer and Jaden Blanchette of FJ McElligott in Mattawa.
Making their first ever OFSAA appearances, both Justin Tremblay of Ecole Secondaire Catholique l'Horizon and Dominik Brunette-Royer of Collège Notre-Dame found the going tough, though the experienced they garnered should hopefully pay dividends in 2020.
