Hello all,

I thought I'd get some ideas off people about how to deal with issues when a club begins to evolve.

Our club was founded as a social badminton club for families to come and have some fun, that was probably about 30 years ago. Some of the club founders are still playing at the club and feel they play an important role even although they don't want to be on the committee. In the last few years it has become obvious that there are now 3 distinct groups, the Advanced Players, the Intermediate Players and the Social/Beginners.

Those that founded the club are still just social players/beginner level but they get annoyed when the better players don't play with them. When the better players do play with them they get annoyed when they don't ease off for them.

The advanced players have formed their own clicky group at the other extreme and get annoyed when intermediate players want to improve their game and play with them. Not only that but the advanced players are passing the same thinking onto the junior players when they coach them. This is seen in the form of arrogance at tournaments.

It seems that there is no way to make everybody happy. We want our club to grow competitive players but we don't want to loose our social players.

I'd be interested to know how other clubs deal with issues similar to this!!

In Australia Badminton has always been primarily a social activity not a competitive sport and important things like sportsmanship don't get taught to the new players. Now that the sport is recognised here and emerging thanks to our mulicultural country we are coming across new issues. Badminton in general is full of bad sportsmanship and clicky groups so I really hope I can come up with some ideas to fix those problems before the problems wreck the club!!

Good on you for trying to come up with a solution.

However, I think it's a lost cause. There will always be cliques, people that are a**holes that don't want to play with others they deem inferior, and those that never want to use their feather birds during matches. :)

Good luck though.

I write this because the other night there was a massive dumby spit at our club with F Words flying around. We had some badminton newbies there that must have wondered what was going on. Not only that but there were kids there to. The funny thing is it was an Indonesian doing all the yelling and cursing. This is strange for me and a bit out of character for an Indonesian. They are normally reserved people that won't tell you they dislike you even if they really do!! Well mannered. The argument almost turned into blows which got most people's attention. I really think that Badminton being a minority sport is unfortunately quite a way behind in the education stakes when it comes to sportmanship. I'm not saying there are bad sportman in other sports but they are taught about it at least. Also given the ratio of Football players to Badminton Players in Australia is probably greater than 1000:1 I'm sad to see so much bad sportmanship.

I guess you're right, there's nothing I can do about it accept to educate and hope. I hope things workout.

By the sound of it, your club seems pretty big and has a long history. I would imagine there must be some "club rules" or 'Dos and Donts" or something like that. If not, then I suggest the committee need to work out something quick as this should form the basic principle of some behavioural and ethics issues. This is important and needed sooner or later since you have a large and mixed group of people/characters/ethnic background in the club.

When that is in place, you might want to tackle to issue of different level of play by perhaps form an internal league (say social, intermediate and advance groups), let the members sign up freely base on their own judgement. Then within the group, form some minimum standards, such as one can challenge only 1-level up, and you must play with own level of players how many times a month, and have a score chart/league table etc.

Yes this sounds like a administration nightmare, but with the size of your group, some control is definitely needed. The members need to know they must contribute towards to good of the club and cannot sit round just enjoy the benefits.

^ that's what I wanted to say too but i R lazy. :P

Good stuff, Linus.

It's never an easy balance trying to please the social players who want to extend themselves playing better people and the better players who want to have decent games. Too much segregation and there will be resentment from one quarter, too much mixing and the better players will simply stop coming to club as it becomes a waste of their time. If that happens, then which group stands to lose the most?

In just about every club I've played at, the top players (county and national level in NZ and the UK) don't bother going to club night. The other club members would occasionally grumble about this, but at the end of the day, what's in it for the top players (other than a warm fuzzy feeling from helping others)? The only exception is a club I played at with a good social scene which was also quite large. This allowed the more senior players to take turns playing with the beginners and intermediate level players.

Wayne Young

We aren't big! On a Monday social night we get about max 30 people but the club is growing slowly as the sport becomes more popular. I'm one of the Advanced players in the club that gets pushed to the Intermediate Levels because I'm not part of the click! I was kinda pressured into the committee job but there are others that complain that should probably do the organising of the social group. The advanced players (click players) don't advertise when they are training accept amongst themselves. For some reason they are always picked for the tournies. Something needs to be done at the top and the bottom levels of the club so I think I might start with a code of ethics or find out if we have one. Because the club was formed as a social group I doubt there is a code of ethics.

The only way forward would be to call an EGM to discuss dividing the court time. Everyone wants to enjoy their badminton and to improve. This is the key fact to all. Without it the club will die.

In order to improve we need to play against higher level players, however this will be frustrating for all if its for too long. Lower levels fed up with getting stuffed and the advanced fed up with poor play and losing sharpness.
It must be agreed that he higher level players need their time also to practice with players of similar standard. Set aside some time in the club night for general mixing, either using a peg board system for half the time and then the rest of the time for segregation. You gotta have all abilities their at the same time or else the club will begin to fail.

Devise a Club calendar for all to see. All key dates, such as league matches, tournaments, social events, practice times.

I dont know what the badminton scene is like in your area. Check to see if there are competitions available for the lower level players. If not why not? Set up some friendly matches. Get 1 or 2 of the clicky advanced players to train as coaches and help out with practices.

The advanced players have formed their own clicky group at the other extreme and get annoyed when intermediate players want to improve their game and play with them. Not only that but the advanced players are passing the same thinking onto the junior players when they coach them. This is seen in the form of arrogance at tournaments.
that part really caught my eye, mostly because it's the smuggest thign I've ever read.

I can understand the better players want to play with each other, but what harm is there to let a new guy in form time to time? If I wasn't surrounded with good-willing advanced players letting me play along I would never have become the player I am now...(pretty big cliche for an 18year old perhaps;))

At my current club I'd say the division is like that, but with 700 members there're a lot more shades of grey, so the extreme ends rarely meet, but slightly inbalanced matches do occur...
At my old club, they had a real passion for tournaments. I'll try to explain:

It's a internal tournament for each to subscribe to, only play doubles or mixed doubles. Players get an A tag or a B tag (good/not so good), each drawing of a round (say 15min) is A/B vs A/B and maybe some AA vs AA or BB vs BB if the numbers aren't equal.
Emphasis is always on fun (no prizes, except some humorous stuff, maybe some "special courts" to ensure a laugh) You could almost describe as a kiddie tournament played by adults:p Which makes it all the more hilarious.

Meeting people, playign such games, having a beer with each other afterwards can calm down such a situation pretty nicely

Unfortunately Jerby, in many clubs people who are willing to play with so-called "Lesser Players" is few and far between. I myself have seen the difference in a local club I played at ages ago with my Uncle.

When I was there as a 16 year old, people were very friendly and on numerous occasions I had advanced players ask me to play. In fact I even had one night where three advanced players invited me to play and my partner told me we were going to stay in a offensive formation with me at the back. He wanted me to get used to playing backcourt smashing and drops. After the game I got alot of great advice.

Now that same club more then 10 years later is full of these "advanced" players who believe the club is only about them. In fact the previous year they got some funding from the government so instead of lowering their membership price, they reduced the number of members and turned away any new members who were not considered "advanced". This impacted the club I play at, we had people driving from the other side of town to join. It was so bad that we had a 20 person waiting list within opening of the sign up table for new members.

I guess for some people joining and being part of clubs like this is not about the social aspect... it is not about fostering improved members to add variety to the opponents you play. Some people just want to play in their own clique playing the same people over and over again. In some cases it is just about the status of saying "I am advanced and you are not".

I drive about 25kms two or three times a week to play but the drive becomes a little less worthwhile when you are met with abusive behaviour upon arrival. I have no problem with advanced players training together, it is normal and important for skill development but when there are other advanced players in the club that miss out because they aren't part of a click it is quite annoying. In our club the difference between advanced players and the click group is minimal. Yes they beat us because they get a lot of skill practice that gives them the edge but as far as fitness goes others are as fit or fitter. I have been to training sessions and you aren't really taken seriously. After getting beaten badly by our number 1 player at a recent tourny (difference in fitness between us is minimal) I said to the guy, "how do you play those awesome shots that get me off balance all the time?" His answer was, "practice!" There lies the issue. How do we recieve the skill training when we don't get practice at that level? How does someone know how to build a house without any knowlege? I think our club needs a clear pathway through the ranks so that everybody wanting to improve gets a fair chance. We are from a small city so I can't just go to the "other" club down the road. We rely on what we have so we have to get it right the first time.

As an outsider who "came up through the ranks" to overtake most of my contemporaries at the time who were part of the "in" crowd, I can tell you for a fact that begrudging their "clique-i-ness" is not going to get you anywhere. And why should they care if others don't improve? It's not their responsibility.

In the absence of dedicated coaching, the only thing that will help you to get better is an unshaking dedication to improve and show them who's the boss. To beat them occasionally is not enough. You have to do it time and time again. Because they won't play you socially, this has to be done when it counts: tournaments and trial matches. It sounds very unfair, but life is like that sometimes. You need to watch and analyse and think about the differences in what they do and what you do. You need to train with people who will hit with you who are also dead keen to get better. They don't have to be brilliant but simply want to improve as much as you do. If you don't train so hard that you want to throw-up, then you'll never beat them.

And you know what? When you get there, it feels pretty good. In case it's not clear, I'm speaking from experience here.

Wayne Young

The main differences would be accuracy which comes about by doing repetitive training drills. The selection for tournies is not really open and transparent either, I need to find out if that's done democratically because it seems interesting that the same few are always going to the tournaments. I've never played till I sprew before but there was this time that I ate to much Indo food with chilly before playing, lol. I just hope things get better soon.

Stick with it. Determination and critical analysis can take you far.

However, a little help along the way never hurts. The thing about the better players is that they are still people, and people have egos. I think you'll find that most players are happy to help if you ask them directly for it. Yes, by asking them for their advice, you are shamelessly appealing to their egos. In my experience, the better players inherently have bigger egos - that's just the way it is. Afterall, if they didn't think they were better than everyone else, then chances are, they're probably not. Exploit their human nature for your benefit.

Wayne Young

I think such problems occur everywhere, especially for public open clubs. Lackness of communication between groups or management usually make the situation to be even worse.

1. The manager's job is not to make every single one to be happy. Once the rule is set, it for the benefit of the majority, but not any particular individual. If you need to enforce a rule (of course, after it's approved and well published to the group), you have to do it. Sometimes, get rid off a bad apple, is to save the big pile.

2. Establish some communication between groups. Let's say you have 3 hours per session. Maybe make the 1st hour to be "stick your own group" type of time, therefore, similar level of players can stick to their comfortable group, and play competitive type of games. Then, the last 2 hours can be "mixture" type of grouping, as everyone is subject into a pool, and different level (but reasonable) of players should play all together. Base on your situation, the schedule, ratio, players levels can be subject to change.

3. Sometimes, a member of the committee needs to sacrifice some of his/her own playing time to manage, especially if there are a lot of ppl showing up, or there are conflicts break out. I know a lot of open clubs don't really have the manager, and the so-call "person in charge" only takes care of equipment setup and collecting fees. Now, if you want to change the situation, maybe you need to be the 1st one to step up, and try to manage. Of course, it's not fair to put the whole thing on 1 shoulder, and you can call up other committee members, to rotate the duty.

4. Try to also organize some off-court activities, such as after session dinner, karaoke on holidays or weekend, short field trip, etc. Sometimes, it's much easier to communicate and explore ppl's inside, when everyone is relax and having fun. The off court activities play as a "team bond", as no one will care about winning or losing, or who's the best smasher, etc. Just chitchat, eat and having fun. You never know, once ppl become buddy buddy, they will break their own "click" and willing to accept more ppl to join their used to be little tiny resitricted group. ;)