Then the camp really started with the first coach education session in the small hall. All coaches lead by An, Alan and Peter had a session and education on rear court offence. At the same time, all players had their first training in the sports-hall of Sacre Coeur. With the topic ‘getting started’ the other 5 staff kept the players active. After a break the second session of the morning started. This time all participants were in the big hall and the staff made exercises with the players about ‘rear court offence’. This gave the coaches the possibility to see and apply their newly adopted knowledge by coaching the players.

After the lunch and a break the singles tournament started with the great help of Karl and Ronald as well as Lilli. With the great number of 25 female and 25 male players the group stage gave the opportunity to everyone to play at least 2 to 3 matches. Followed by the knockout-system we found the two winner of the singles event: Viktoriya Varabyova ( Belarus) and Ivan Rusev(Bulgaria). Congratulations on very good games. The draw can be found here: women’s singles & men’s singles.
While the players were fighting for their wins Alan and Kenn taught the coaches in a ‘feeding-session’. In the meanwhile the other staff-coaches organized and arranged the groups for the smaller sessions.

The staff could apply the new group-system in the last session of the day after the dinner. In the new groups the players, coaches and staff worked together until ten o’clock. This session gave the staff and coaches the opportunity to get to know their players even better. However, the late badminton session did not mean the end of a really long day for the coaches and staff. They then started to prepare their upcoming practice lessons and it turned out to be a very long and exhausting day.

But even though it was a very hard day, everybody related to the camp worked very hard, stayed focus and gave their best. It is really great to see all the energy, enthusiasm and motivation of all!!!

Some impressions of the different participants:

Hello, I am Ivan Trakov from Bulgaria and this is my first camp. I am so happy to be here. There are many players and coaches from many different countries with a lot of experience. First of all we were playing funny games. But this was just the first day, after that we were in the hall from 8 o’clock in the morning until 10.30 in the evening. I believe it will be a great week.

Hello I am Alexander Kambioler from italy. I am the only one from my country. It’s my third Summer School. I like about the camp that there are many player and coaches from different countries who have a lot of experience.
It was a very strong day. Eight hours playing badminton is very much, but I like it. I likevery much the funny games because so I can meet and speak with other players.
I hope it will be a nice week and that I will learn a lot.

The real work at the European Badminton Summer School in Pressbaum (Austria) started today.
While 50 players from 17 different countries were on their first morning training in the large group, 25 coaches from 21 different countries were working together in another hall at their coach education course. The focus of the coaches was on theory and practice how to progress training sessions, from simple exercises to game situations.
In the afternoon, the players had their favourite activity – the singles tournament. Not most important, but we'll mention that the Bulgarian Ivan Rusev won the men’s and Viktoriya Varabyova from Belarus won in women’s competition. While the second part of the tournament, the coaches were working in another hall. Under the lead of Alan McIlvain (Scotland) and Kenn Lim (Malaysia) thye worked on the improving of their feeding.
At the 20 o'clock session, the staff coaches divided all players in 8 groups and allocated 2 or 3 coaches responsible for each group. From this moment, the Summer School showed in real light, why it's a unique combination of a training camp for talented junior players and a coach education course. The players then got the chance to introduce themselves to their new coaches.
After third training-session, the players went to rest and their room. However, all coaches had a very, very long night full with constructive discussions. The task was to set up the best training schedule for the players of their groups and give them maximum quality in following days.

Oh fine, raining -> during the night started a ‘storm’ and heavy rain. On Sunday, we were welcomed with fresh air and with big optimism we met all together at 8 o’clock
Sunday generally is in my opinion the hardest day for the players. The first really training day – and already 4 training sessions on the program, including the tournament. Anyway – both the players and coaches started with big enthusiasm ‘their job’. I believe, that for some of the players 6 hours training – play was not an ‘easy’ start. But attention, keep going and trying was the ‘motto’ of today.
After the super organization of Lina, the camp tournament was very well done. For us as staff-coaches was this tournament and the first day training the first impression of all participants.
After the tournament we selected the player for 8 groups. Every group of 6 to 7 players with 2 to 3 coaches which lead tomorrow the first individual session of the players. I hope this was a very successful day and good start of the 29^th BE Summer School!