The Graduates' Badminton Club is an informal club run by Ian Rudy. You are welcome to join us if you are a graduate, postgraduate student, postdoctoral student, college Fellow or staff member of the University. We meet throughout the year at the St Catharine's College Court on Thursdays from 8 to 10pm.
Something you may like to be aware of is that we have only one court. We aim to get 6-8 people along per evening, so this is not a huge problem, but if you are looking for a club where you can play continuously for two hours, we aren't it. We aim to have about ten to twelve members in the Club, which means it is possible, if all of them want to play, that we have to semi-randomly select one or two to drop out in such a week. However, in practice, this is likely to happen rarely (at most once or twice a year) to any individual player, and in our view is preferable to having to cancel evenings because there are too few people to play.
We play with Yonex Mavis 300 plastic shuttles.
The St Catharine's Courts are next to the St Catharine's Sports Ground, on South Green Road: go to the end of the Granchester Meadows road in Newnham and turn right just before it turns into a dirt track. South Green Road has no street lights at first, and in winter it is therefore quite dark, but persevere. The squash and badminton courts are at the end of it (about 150 yards) on the right. Here is a map of the area. The red/yellow arrow points at the court, but don't be fooled into thinking that you can easily get there from Millington Road! I'm happy to meet new people somewhere that is easier to find, such as outside the Co-op on Granchester Road.
Currently, we can accept people only if they have some experience of the game, preferably doubles. A rough guide is that you need to be able to hit the shuttle cleanly, consistently, and to the point you desire in the opposition court most of the time, to understand that it is better to be hitting the shuttle down rather than up, and perhaps have a sense of how to get the opposition to hit it up so that you can hit it down.
You can find a short video of some of our games here as a Windows Media Video (wmv) file, size about 4.5MB. If you use a Mac then you may need to download some suitable software, such as VLC player, to play this. There are two different games, actually played on two different days. I'm the grey-haired guy at the camera end in both games. If you exclude me from the first game, the three players there are of the lower standard of players in the Club. The second game involves the stronger players in the Club.
You will eventually need to be familiar with doubles court positioning (ie side by side if defending, and front and back if attacking) but we can teach you this if you are otherwise of a decent standard: see my Guide to court positioning.
We do *not* expect women to play at the front as much as possible, as they would in traditional mixed doubles, unless they are quite weak. This does not mean our women players have to be as good as men, but it does mean they have to be of a reasonable standard, and that nobody over-exploits the relative weakness of a female opponent.
Feel free to come along and just watch if you aren't sure whether we are the right standard for you. If you are just beginning, or do not meet our eligibility criteria, I can give you some advice on where else to try in Cambridge.
There is a termly fee of around ten to fifteen pounds which covers court fees and shuttles. A term in this sense means three months: Jan-Mar, Apr-Jun, Jul-Sep, Oct-Dec. Please bring your own drink if you need it.
This document last updated: 26 January 2012.
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