Mike Beres Wins the Triple Crown!!

Wow. Mike Beres won the triple crown this weekend at the nationals. Last I spoke to Mike about his career he was saying that he may not play beyond this year. For the men’s doubles and mixed doubles I am not particularly surprised. The men’s doubles was pretty much Mike and Will, or Keith and Jon as far as I was concerned. The mixed was either Mike and Val, or Will and Tammy. But in the men’s singles, I was almost 100% sure it was going to be Stephan and Andrew in the finals. I would have bet $100 that Andrew would beat Mike in the semis. Not to say Mike isn’t a good singles player, but Andrew is doing some serious training, and specialized in singles. Whereas Mike played all three events. I suppose the 21 points did Mike well.

Anyway, Mike beat Andrew 15-21, 21-17, 22-20 in the semis. A really close match, and I guess it could be that Andrew wasn’t playing his best (he did go three games with young gun David Snider), but props to Mike. On the other side Stephan Wojcikiewicz beat Kyle Foley in another three game battle 17-21, 21-14, 21-15. Then in the finals Mike beat Stephan in a very close three games 19-21, 21-17, 21-19.

Mike and Val Loker won their mixed title after only playing 3 matches, and not dropping a single game the entire time. In the final they defeated Tammy Sun and Will Milroy 21-19, 21-17. Finally Mike’s last title was the men’s doubles with partner Will Milroy. They had a really close semi-final against Keith Chan and Jon Vandervet, winning 17-21, 21-9, 21-19. The final however was not nearly as close, they defeated Toby Ng and Alvin Lau in two short games 21-11, 21-11.

As for the women’s events, Charmaine Reid won a double crown. In the doubles she partnered up with Fiona McKee who got her first Open event national title, without dropping a game. However, they only had to win two matches to win the title. In the final they defeated Florence Lavoie and Amelie Felx 21-18, 21-14.

Finally in the women’s singles Charmaine played Canada’s winningest player, Denyse Julien. It was a very close match, but Charmaine came out the champ winning 21-15, 14-21, 22-20 to take her second national singles title in a row.

Overall it was a disappointing nationals, with very few entries, and two marquee players (Bobby Milroy and Anna Rice) not playing. It seems like badminton in Canada is going through something of a drought. We need a lot more people to play, this was just weak compared to past events.