World Junior Badminton Championships
Incheon City, South Korea
World Gymnasium
November 2-11, 2006
By Kevin Hussey
The World Junior Badminton Championships (U19 Division) was an exciting event that was held this year in Incheon City, Korea. The World Gymnasium was the host venue that supported nine “rolled out” green badminton courts housed in the main arena. Six practice courts were set up in a lower level gym for all participants to utilize throughout the tournament. Hosted by the Korean Badminton Association and conducted under the direction of the International Badminton Association (soon to be called the World Badminton Federation), this year’s championship event was extremely well organized and run for both the team and the individual championships.
Thirty two countries were represented during the team and individual events and the United Stated entered the maximum of 5 boys and 5 girls. Participants from the United States included: Ben Hussey, Emanuel Pun, Howard Shu, Jack Shu, Arnold Setiadi, Lauren Todt, Priscilla Lun, Alice Wen, Rena Wang, and Cheryl Chow.
The tournament begins with a team format, and this year’s event hosted a record number of team entries at 32 countries. Four pools of eight teams are drawn with each pool of eight further subdivided into pools of four. In the sub-pool with USA were Turkey, Egypt, and China. A team match consists of one girl’s singles, one boy’s singles, one girl’s doubles, one boy’s doubles, and one mixed doubles. In order to win a team match (tie), one country must win three matches. In our first match against Turkey, we lost by a score of 4-1 with our only win coming in boys doubles by Jack Shu and Arnold Setiadi. In our second match against Egypt, we prevailed by a score of 5-0. Finally, in our third match against China, we lost by a score of 5-0. In all three matches, USA played extremely well as representatives of USA badminton. A USA team win over Egypt was a joyous occasion since USA was winless in the World Junior Team Championships two years ago in Canada. However, the winning was not going to end with Egypt. After finishing third in our sub-pool of 4 countries, we then had to play the other third place finisher in our corresponding sub-pool which would be New Zealand. In this match, only the numbers of matches needed are played. In other words, when one country wins three ties, the match is over. In our match against New Zealand, the order of matches was mixed doubles first followed by singles and doubles. As is turned out, our mixed doubles team of Arnold Setiadi and Alice Wen was victorious which was subsequently followed by singles wins from Howard Shu and Lauren Todt to end the match. This second USA team match win placed us into a play off between the other three countries that finished 5th in their larger pool of eight as well. This would guarantee USA a finish of 17-20th place in the team tournament.
Hong Kong was our first opponent in the final tournament phase with Vietnam and Ukraine on the other half of the draw. As it turned out, Hong Kong beat us by a score of 3-0, and Ukraine defeated Vietnam. So, in our final team match, Vietnam defeated USA also by a score of 3-0 leaving the USA in 20th place overall. Although both 3-0 losses in our final team matches were disappointing, they were well fought and the USA should be proud of their accomplishment in this year’s team championship event.
The team tournament was highlighted by a match between China and Korea in the championship. In the end, Korea won by a score of 3-2, but all five matches were very exciting to watch with an end result that could have gone in the direction of either country. The home crowd / court advantage probably was beneficial for Korea.
The individual singles and doubles tournament began the next day immediately following the team tournament championship match. USA entered the maximum number of entries allowed in all three events of singles, doubles, and mixed doubles. Although well fought and well represented by all USA Olympic Hopefuls, only Arnold Setiadi, Ben Hussey, Lauren Todt, and Alice Wen were successful in winning a first round or beyond match. Since the individual tournaments were strictly a knock-out tournament format, only winners play beyond the first matches. Lauren Todt won her first singles match against Bulgaria. In her second round match, Lauren lost to Korea. Ben Hussey won his first singles match against Canada but lost to Korea in his second round match. Since Ben’s opponent from Korea eventually won the singles title, Ben can say that he played and scored points against the World Champion. Arnold Setiadi secured the most tournament wins by winning the first round match in mixed doubles with Alice Wen against Bulgaria before losing in their second round to Chinese Taipei. In singles, Arnold won his first round against Singapore his second round against South Africa and eventually losing to Denmark in a hard fought round of 32 singles match. Exiting in the Top 32 players in the World sounds pretty good. Congratulations to Arnold and all of Team USA.
It was a pleasure serving as the coach of this year’s USA World Junior Badminton Team and I would like to compliment the outstanding efforts and behaviors of all team members. USA Badminton should be proud of their accomplishments. I would also like to thank the parents (Mr. and Mrs. Eric Setiadi, Aris Shu, and Raymond Wang) who traveled with the team to help make this team travel a wonderful success.
In addition, my personal thanks to Mr. Jim Todt for all his superb organizational and managerial efforts prior to and throughout the World Championships. Jim was the key ingredient that helped to make this Championship Travel Event a wonderful experience for the USA athletes. My sincere and humble thanks go out to Jim, and of course his wife Susan, for all the time, energy, and commitment on behalf of USA Junior Badminton and specifically to the support given to this USA Junior Badminton World Championship Team.
Finally, I’d like to thank the Midwest Badminton Association and the Eastern Illinois University Badminton Club and Friends for the financial support given to Ben and me in support of our travels to this World Championship Event.
For complete results of the World Junior Badminton Championships, you should go to the IBF web site: http://www.koreabadminton.org/wjc/game/result_e.asp