Youth train for Olympic Badminton – RB final 2024
The RB finals for youth training for the Olympics in the sport of badminton always take place in January. This time the competition location was in Horgenzell near Ravensburg.
A total of 13 boys from competition classes IV, III and I traveled to Upper Swabia on three days of competition and held exciting competitions against teams from the entire Tübingen regional council. Two doubles and four singles are played against each opponent.
On Tuesday, January 23rd, 2024, three out of five players made their competitive debut in Competition IV, i.e. against players from classes 5 and 6. Linus Müller, Yiwen Xu, Jakob Bachhofer, Vinzenz Wanner and Timo Burkhardtsmaier gave it their all and after hard-fought matches they were able to they achieved 5th place.
On Thursday, January 25th, 2024, Oliver Kütt-Gimenez, Pablo Pitzer, Yunzhen Tang and Yijiao Lu started for JVG Ehingen in Competition I. Many exciting games took place against strong opponents from Wangen, Mössingen and Salem. With the Chinese players from the Schloss Salem school there were particularly hotly contested but always fair games in which there was a lot of laughter. After the group phase, the boys had to compete again against the team from the Schloss Salem school, against whom they had narrowly lost in the first round. They started the battle highly motivated – and this time their efforts were crowned with success. The team deservedly won the game for third place.
On the second day of competition, Wednesday, January 24, 2024, four boys took to the field with the clear goal: state finals. Jan Necker, Nikita Kimmel, Benjamin Wenger and David Weimer won the group stage against the Sommertalschule Meersburg and the Walter Knoll School from Bad Saulgau: they won 6-0 against both opponents and became group winners of one of the three groups.
In the fight for the final victory, and thus for the ticket to the state finals, the other two group winners, the team from the Graf-Eberhard-Gymnasium from Bad Urach and the team from the Wangen secondary school, stood in the way. The JVG team shone again and won against these two teams 6-0. The wish of reaching the state finals came true and the joy was enormous.
In free competition, the state finals are the highest level you can reach. A victory in this tournament crowns success.
Since the state final took place in Eberbach, between Heilbronn and Heidelbg, we arrived the day before and stayed overnight in the Mosbach youth hostel together with other teams that had won first place in their age group in the regional councils of Freiburg, Karlsruhe and Stuttgart. Neckarelz. On March 7, 2024, Nikita Kimmel, David Weimer, Benjamin Wenger and Jan Necker competed against teams from the three other regional councils and it became clear: they have a lot of competition experience and are really strong opponents. After hard-fought games, the boys were able to beat the team from RP Karlsruhe from Walldorf High School 6-0 and thus reach third place. The Limes-Gymnasium Welzheim won the state final, the Birklehof boarding school from Hinterzarten in RP Freiburg took second place.
In the current 2024/25 school year, around 30 students registered to take part in the competition. We have finally been able to register a girls’ team again for many years. Keep your fingers crossed for all of us that we can experience great competitions again in mid-January, this time it’s going to Altshausen.
