On Thursday evening at the National Gymnasium on Mandela Avenue, the National Junior Badminton Tournament opened.

Sponsored by the National Sports Commission (NSC), Director of Sport, Steve Ninvalle, gave the feature address to officially open the tournament.
The tournament, which has U-11, U-15 and -U19 players from Demerara and Berbice competing for top honours, was scheduled to continue last night and conclude with the finals today.
“The Guyana Badminton Association (GBA) observed breast Cancer Awareness by asking everybody to wear pink since this month is Pinktober. So, it’s like a social issue we tried to highlight as part of the Tournament to keep up with things that are happening,” informed GBA President, Emily Ramdhani.

Ninvalle told the gathering, which comprised players, officials and members of the NSC, that anything the NSC does they look at the foundation.
“When I look out and see the foundation of Badminton in Guyana, it’s exceedingly important that we place emphasis on the nursery of not only your core sport but all other sports disciplines.

From the level of the National Sports Commission, we are very heartened by what we see happening in Badminton. Badminton reaches out as one of the more organised Core sports,” informed Ninvalle to loud applause from the players and officials.

“That is when we get a request from the Guyana Badminton Association, we tend to treat it as a priority because of the level of organisation and level of what you are doing at the Academy.

Now I want to ask one thing…it’s very important that you have players from Berbice but for your next Junior tournament I want to see players from Essequibo too. This is a challenge I want to throw out to the Executives of the Badminton Association… Let’s try and make it as National as possible,” posited the Director of Sports.