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In a world as tight-knit as the badminton community in Sudbury, the cross-connections are everywhere.

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The confirmation of what I believed to be true came swiftly — and in waves — as I set my sights this past week on three acknowledged hotbeds of the sport in Sudbury: the Cambrian Shield varsity program, the College Boreal varsity program and the Sudbury Junior Badminton Club, the last of which operates out of St. Benedict Catholic Secondary School.

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The first stop set the tone as I ventured off to a Cambrian practice Wednesday evening, the team having competed at a small handful of OCAA tournaments but gearing down for the exam period in December.

There I met Dominik Brunette-Royer — yet again!

A 22-year-old who has now returned to Cambrian and enrolled in computer programming after stepping away to work for a few years, Brunette-Royer first chatted with me back in March 2017, then a Grade 8 student at Ecole St. Pierre who had teamed with Gillian Obradovich to claim the mixed doubles crown at the Northern Ontario Badminton Association championships in Timmins.

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It might have taken a few practices to get back in the groove, but the College Notre-Dame graduate who was a mainstay on the club scene for about six years is beginning to shed the rust that comes from playing at a vastly different level.

“I was playing, probably more recreationally, training a little bit here and there,” said Brunette-Royer, providing an overview of the past year or two. “But coming back and doing drills, pushing myself, it’s made me way better than I was before. The cardio did not come back quickly, but once that was good, then the rest of my game was fairly simple to pick up again.”

Though he has one season of OCAA experience under his belt, having competed for Cambrian some four years ago, Brunette-Royer was reminded very quickly of why the Ontario collegiate ranks have garnered a very good reputation in the sport.

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“The major component is just their consistency,” he said. “When you go down there, it’s not that they are necessarily much better, skill-wise, but they not only know where to put the bird, but they are so good at keeping the bird in play.

“They don’t hit it out; they don’t hit it into the net; it’s always in play.”

Aged out of the NOBA youth ranks, Brunette-Royer nonetheless confirmed his intention to spend some time around the Fall Invitational Tournament hosted by the Sudbury Junior Badminton Club and head coach Troy Brushett on Friday and Saturday. And for as much as the out-of-town contingent walked away with many a title over the weekend, local ties were still very easy to find.

A member of the Timmins Badminton Club, U16 boys singles A champion Calvin Yu brandishes a name that might ring a bell in these parts, given that he is the nephew of Cambrian College Athletic Director and former OCAA medallist Tim Yu.

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Is it any wonder that the very well-spoken young man was seemingly first on the court while still in diapers?

“I was six when I first started playing seriously, but maybe two when I first had a racquet in my hand and was just hitting the fun,” said the Grade 9 student at Ecole Secondaire Theriault, setting the record straight.

“It was all about working on consistency and getting a base of fundamentals.”

Though that approach has clearly served the purpose, Yu noted his overall focus has begun to shift as he works hard to fully round out his game.

“I am much further ahead attacking versus defending,” he stated. “Over the years, I really focused on attacking.

“I’ve really got to work on getting a bit wider in my stance, being more mature in my game — but the defensive part of my game has improved a lot more this year.”

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Another member of the Timmins brigade, Grey Pope claimed the U19 boys singles A crown, though he remained in Sudbury on Sunday, given that the 18-year-old is in his first year of fitness and health promotion studies at Boreal.

A graduate of Ecole publique secondaire Renaissance, the young man who partook in a whole slew of different sports in his youth came back to badminton in Grade 10, “loving the game and dedicating myself to it.”

From there, it was a matter of breaking the game down into much greater minutia, paying attention to those details that are the focus of a group like the Timmins Badminton Club.

“The technicalities of the sport, the footwork, especially in doubles play: playing club created an area where I could work on that type of stuff, which was nice,” Pope said.

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And while much of his time was spent practising the doubles game simply due to the limitations of only so many courts to go around for a growing club membership, he admitted that singles is where he feels most at home.

“I tend to get mad at myself when I make a mistake playing doubles and then I feel bad for my partner,” Pope said. “I’ve had some trouble with the mental part of my game, but singles is where I am the strongest.”

That term, as he has come to learn, requires a little perspective, especially when some of the top singles players in the country compete within the OCAA.

“The jump in skill with the top players is huge,” he noted. “There is a fluidity to their game, a rhythm that they have — and it’s really hard to break their rhythm.

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“For a player like me, it’s easy to break my rhythm and then I am kind of off. That’s the biggest difference that I see.”

Mind you, to his College Boreal teammate Alyssa Gagne, it’s entirely possible Pope appears to be at a whole other level. Though in her third year in the fish and wildlife program and as a member of the Viperes varsity team, the 20-year-old graduate of Ecole secondaire Hanmer virtually started from scratch in the fall of 2023.

“I was not a sports person growing up,” said Gagne, a musician who can hold her own with four different instruments and decided in her final year of high school to add an athletic element to her resume.

“In Grade 12, it was just for fun; we played one tournament only,” she said. “I started taking it more seriously in my first year of college. Even how I was holding my racquet was wrong.”

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Gagne had also only ever experienced mixed doubles play before arriving at Boreal, and for as much as that served her reasonably well as a starting point for that same discipline in college, the truth is that every OCAA badminton athlete is going to enjoy time in all three avenues of badminton in tournament play (singles; doubles; mixed doubles).

Improvement came in time.

“By Year 2, I had all of the rotations down — I knew where I was going on the court,” she said.

“This year, I am trying to get in longer rallies, as many as I can — and meeting everyone is fun.”

Because as every badminton player knows, it’s a very special circle that welcomes you in once you devote yourself to this sport.

Randy Pascal’s That Sudbury Sports Guy column appears regularly in The Sudbury Star.

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