Greenview bow out of badminton nationals with 4-1 loss to RI

By Les Tan/Red Sports

Jurong West Sports Complex, Friday, March 30, 2007 – Greenview Secondary, champions of the East Zone, made their exit from the nationals when they went down 1-4 to Raffles Institution yesterday in the National B Division Badminton Championship.

Greenview had started their National Championship campaign with bright hopes after having beaten Victoria, Anglican High, Dunman High and Chung Cheng High in the East Zone. In their earlier Schools National games, Greenview had beaten Fuhua 4-1 but lost to Ang Mo Kio 0-5.

However, their hopes for this game against RI were dampened when 4 of their starting line-up came down with various ailments. Greenview’s first singles player, Shawn Wong, lost 0-2 to RI’s Jie Xiong but their first doubles pair of Oh Jun Xian and Kenny Ong beat RI’s Boon Tiong and Matthew 17-15, 15-3 to even up the score 1-1.

"We made mistakes receiving service," said Kenny, as he sat there sweating after the game. "We’re not used to this environment," added Jun Xian. "We’re not used to such bright lights! But in the second set, we won a lot points unanswered and it never crossed my mind that we would lose the second set even though the first set was so close."

However, Greenview were stopped in their tracks by RI. Greenview’s second singles player He Xun lost 0-2 to RI’s Kai Ping. There was a glimmer of a fightback in the second doubles game when the Greenview pair forced the RI pair of Han Qi and Nicholas into a deciding rubber. However they lost the rubber to go down 1-2. Greenview’s third singles player Wei Jing then went down to RI’s Siva in the inconsequential last game.

Editor: If you recognise yourself or your team mates, please let me know your names. I’ll update the captions. More action shots in the Picture Gallery. Enjoy!