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Former Canadian Olympic badminton player, Valerie Loker, shares her passion and techniques at an elite Badminton camp in North Bay this week. PHOTO by: Jazz Mathon
All eyes and ears were on Valerie Loker as the former Olympian held several clinics this week at the KTP Athletics Elite Badminton Camp. Organizer Kurt Templemans Plat says one of the first such elite camps to be offered in Northern Ontario.
“It’s so cool to take a sport in an area to a whole new level. Not that it wasn’t extremely popular, but there is a significant difference and I think that the longer I do it, we will hopefully see bigger change, such as more coaches getting involved and more players getting involved. There are so many opportunities.”
Loker is a mixed doubles specialist, who won several national championships and Pan Am Games Medals. She was thrilled to be invited as a coach and sees it as a great opportunity to promote her love and passion for the sport.
“Badminton is very popular in York Region where I am from and we love to see it grow, especially in places like North Bay. It’s amazing that Kurt is putting in the effort to try and grow badminton in the North.
Megan Lepoudre of École Publique Odyssée says Loker is very hands on. “She was always teaching us something. It was different training. It was never like ‘here is what we are doing and do it’. She took her time through it and made sure we understood it.”
“It was great. She taught us a lot of cool things, such as proper foot techniques, how to hit the birdie and do clears, as well as how to deceive our opponents,” says Shawn Page of École Secondaire Franco Cité.
Loker retired from the sport in 2009 and coach full time in the York Region. In the two days she was able to work on a variety of techniques, such as court movement, strokes and proper gripping.
“They are getting a bit of strategy too, but we’re putting in a lot fundamentals so they can move to a higher level,” adds Loker.
Templemans Plat will continue coaching throughout the year as he heads the badminton program at Odyssée and also runs the North Bay Rep team.
