Veni – Vidi – Vici!


In the period 14-19 August 2012, the ‘Girls Camp’ for female players and coaches was held in Serbia. The camp was for the second year in a row successfully organized by the badminton clubs ‘Raven KG’ from Kragujevac and ‘Clear’ from Belgrade, in cooperation with the Badminton Association of Serbia. Badminton Europe supported this Regional Project.


The five countries Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania, Austria and Hungary took part in the camp. Only Austria and Hungary though were this year’s “newcomers”. The camp was attended by 24 players and 6 coaches, which was twice as much as in the previous year.
 

All related to the camp was organized very professionally - almost as the camp would be an important business matter. Among the other things, the local media and the professional photographers had been present (interviews with the organizers, players and coaches for the local TV and newspapers, Girls project on Facebook). We even had the formal reception at the City Council.


The camp started with the U13 and U15 doubles tournament. That helped the coaches to get the general image about the level of the players, as well as it helped to the girls to get to know each other in a ‘smoother’ way.
 

We had a great professional input from a professional coach from Belgium, An Soenens. An taught the girls not only to ‘hit the shuttle well’, but also ‘how to think’ during their training sessions, in order to gain as much as possible out of the training.


This year’s main focus in the practising was the tactical side of the game. A lot of different tactical exercises were presented to the players. The main point was ‘to make the players think rather than just train with no real focus’. After the rather rough start, the good progression had been noticed among the players – they developed the ‘independence on the court’, as well as we could see that they started to take more responsibility for their own training.
Beside the serious training, we had some good fun ON as well as OFF the court; on the court with the games like the ‘stress doubles’ and the ‘Burger Dance footwork’; off the court with the ‘pancake’ evening, the bowling, the swimming pool visit, the sightseeing and the ‘ice-cream-surprise’ evening.

‘All that created the great atmosphere in the group,’ says the head coach of the camp, An Soenens. She adds: ‘If you want to get the feeling of how things went, take a look at the 'Girls Project' Facebook page and enjoy the smiling faces!’

As the headline in Latin says - we came to Kragujevac, saw a lot of different things and won the great experience!
 

At the end of the camp the singles tournament had been played.

RESULTS:
1. Andra Olariu (ROM)
2. Katharina Hochmeir (AUT)
3. Reka Madarasz (HUN)
4. Jana Haas (AUT)

 
Article and photo by Corina Dan.