At the start of the 2018/19 season UEL Men’s Badminton team was cut from the universities sports programme due to a lack of players. However, after a year without the team a new one has been created thanks to the help of current captain Noah Cheeseman.
A Passion For Badminton
The first year student had Badminton in mind when putting in applications for universities and thought that UEL, despite not having a team at the time, had good facilities for him to continue with his Badminton training.
He stated “When I was applying for universities, one of the things I was looking for was a university which has good sports facilities for badminton and I did research online and went to the freshers fair, and saw the group i’d seen online and spoke to the women’s badminton captain and that’s how I got involved. She told me what day the try outs were and then I came along for the try outs.”
After playing Badminton on and off throughout high school, Cheeseman started to train with a coach and got involved with his county team whilst he was studying in sixth form.
Taking two gap years after leaving school he had time to properly get involved with his training and started playing for the Dorset league which ultimately led him to looking for universities where he could continue to further his training.
The Importance Of A Team
Cheeseman is extremely passionate about Badminton and the positive effects it can bring into all aspects of his and others life.
“I think it’s a great sport, it’s good because it’s physical but it is also very mental and a lot of people call it physical chess. So I think mixing academics with something like badminton is good and also its a sport that can either be intense or fun, there’s lots of people who play it for fun but also lots of people who play it intensely so i think it’s a good sport to foster and also anyone can get involved.”
When looking to recruit enough players to make up a team, Cheeseman was eager to bring as many players on board so he could have a growing group of players at training each week.
Despite the teams best effort to recruit they have only managed to fill five spaces in a six man squad, this is still enough players to allow them to compete in their BUCS league as a team.
“At the tryouts a lot of people turned up but it was mixed levels and from the people that stayed me and the vice captain Jaron, we wanted to get as many people playing in the team as possible. Although they were probably not ready to play games, it’s good to roster a new selection of players.”
Despite only being at UEL for a number of weeks and with the absence of a men’s team for a year there were no previous committee members or players studying at UEL any more, so Cheeseman quickly had to adapt into this new role and tackle all of the obstacles and tasks which needed doing.
“It was a bit intense because there were about seven of us who were picked at the tryouts so i was like I will put myself forward as i’ve done similar things to this before. But it’s been very full on at the beginning, like you need to do this, having to organise this, just organising six people to get to one place in the UK is a challenge but it’s been fun, me and Jaron get on really well so it’s been good fun really.”
Although his time at UEL started very full on, Cheeseman appreciates the opportunities badminton has given him and the people he has been able to meet since he started playing in high school.
“I think meeting new people is always really good, so already in the club there’s five or six people I see regularly at the uni because of badminton and from before I came to UEL it was a similar thing. There would be competitions and going to different places, it’s the same here we go on trips to Twickenham to Surrey so it’s good fun whether we win or lose.”
The Future At UEL
After all the time and energy spent getting the club back up and running, Cheeseman is eager for it to continue going from strength to strength and to create a lasting legacy for people who want to play Badminton at UEL.
“We are hoping to keep growing, we want to build a solid base of people that continue to come and are interested in playing. We want to make a good stand so in the future the people that we’ve got in the current club want to go on and carry it on then we can continue to stay in that position.”
