Kiwi Badminton Team Aim For Title

The New Zealand under 19 badminton team is aiming to win the Lion Foundation Pan Pacific Series for first time in five years when play gets underway this evening at the North Harbour Badminton Centre.


The last time the Kiwi side won the tournament was in 2005, and this year won’t be easy as they have to try and defeat title holders Australia, a young team from the Singapore Sports School and a second New Zealand team known as New Zealand Associations.

The Singapore players could be very dangerous as they are an unknown side which is young but extremely talented, especially their No1 boy Soon Lee Ong who is highly regarded in a nation where badminton is the highest rating sport. The amount of time the Singaporeans spend training and focusing on badminton is something local players can only dream of.

The Australian team has Oceania under19 Women’s Singles Champion Tara Pilven in its midst and will be no easy beats at all.

The New Zealand team is at full strength featuring Luke Charlesworth from Waitakere who recently won the North Island Championships, Canterbury’s Asher Richardson with Auckland’s Victoria Cheng the top Kiwi woman.

Charlesworth is also an outside chance of making the New Zealand Commonwealth Games team and will be keen to perform in front of officials.

Each tie in the Pan Pacific Championships consists of 11 matches overall; three men’s singles, three women’s singles, one men’s and women’s doubles and three mixed contests.

New Zealand play Singapore in their first match on Tuesday evening while Australia take on the New Zealand Associations side from 6pm.

The Pan Pacific competition runs until Thursday 17 June and is followed by the Westpac New Zealand Junior International which all players from the Pan Pacific Series are playing in as well as a number of other New Zealand under19 players. Play starts in this event at 12 noon on Friday 18th Jun, 10am Saturday 19th with semi-finals at 5pm, finals commence 10am Sunday 20th.