The George Brown Huskies Badminton team put on a show in the East Regional Championships at Georgian College last weekend. The women's team took home first place, while the men finished in third.
The Huskies tallied up four medals in the various disciplines over the weekend. In Women's Singles, the final saw an all Husky matchup between newcomer Huyen Le and defending champion Anh Hoang. It went back-and-forth, but Le got the upper hand picking up the gold medal (21-10, 21-14). The final match against Hoang marked the only time Le surrendered double-digit points to an opponent the entire tournament. Both players will play at the OCAA Championships in a couple of weeks.
Areej Shalwani was very impressive in Men's Singles. The third-year Mechanical Engineering student went undefeated, 5-0, and captured the gold medal. He edged Seneca's Akara Chooprawao in three games (21-17, 19-21, 21-11) to win his first career medal. Shalwani only dropped one game during his run at Regionals.
Chang Li also represented George Brown in Men's Singles. After winning his first two round-robin matches, he fell to Centennial's Parmveer Singh (21-12, 21-10) in the quarter-finals.
The team of Diana Bosco and Fiona Kwan are off to Provincials after earning the bronze medal in Women's Doubles. The pair went 1-2 in round-robin play on Day 1 but bounced back the next day winning both matches highlighted by a 21-12, 21-3 victory over St. Lawrence's Hannah Carswell and Emily Postma to punch their ticket to Conestoga in two weeks.
In Men's Doubles, Yang Jin and Rya Buth just came up short in qualifying for Provincials. They got off to a great start winning two of their three round-robin matches to advance to Day 2. Next day went south for them as they dropped both matches to miss out on the podium.
Regionals are formatted by the top three finishers in each discipline qualifying for the OCAA Provincial Championship, which is scheduled for February 13-14 at Conestoga College.
See below for OCAA Championship Qualifiers:
Men's Singles
1) George Brown – Areej Shalwani
2) Seneca – Akara Chooprawao
3) Centennial – Parmveer Singh
Women's Singles
1) George Brown – Huyen Le
2) George Brown – Anh Hoang
3) Georgian – Jessica Maher
Men's Doubles
1) Seneca – Saatuik Mahajan/Faizan Shaikh
2) St. Lawrence – Brandon Watkins/Aisar Chowdry
3) Centennial – Peter Nie/Hamza Munawar
Women's Doubles
1) Georgian – Kiersten Hillman/Paige Hillman
2) Seneca - Salina He/Sarah Nguy
3) George Brown – Diana Bosco/Fiona Kwan
Mixed Doubles
1) Seneca – Poy Lo/Christine Nguyen
2) Centennial – Brandon Cheung/Jia Li Feng
3) Georgian – Dan Hong/Gurmehar Kalra
Up Next: The Huskies have a week off before they travel to Conestoga College for the 2020 OCAA Provincial Championships on February 13-14.
