?Badminton Eastland Masters’ team kick off their 2019 season this weekend. The team is travelling to Waitakere where they will play Auckland 3 and Horowhenua Kapiti 1 in the North Island Masters Division 3 Competition.
Eastland will have to play Auckland 3 in their first tie for the season. Auckland3 were relegated from Division 2 last year. Eastland’s manager Debbie Brown thinks the team will be going into the unknown playing Auckland 3 first up, and not knowing the players or how they play. Auckland 3 have a greater region to source players from, so you never know who might turn up to play on the day.
Eastland play Horowhenua Kapiti 1 in the afternoon. Horowhenua Kapiti 1 finished 3rd last year, one place ahead of Eastland who finished 4th. Eastland have only just lost to Horowhenua Kapiti 1 for the last two years. The match scores were 6 all, and the result was on count back to determine who won. Both times Horowhenua Kapiti 1 took the honours, so Eastland are hoping to get that monkey off their back this year and to hopefully come away with the win. The team travelling this time are Mark Beard, David Colbert, Justin Kent, Debbie Brown (manager/coach), Gabrielle Perano, Victoria West and Adrianne McLeod, all from the Gisborne club. Gary Teague from Manawatu is returning to play for Eastland after having the opportunity to play for Manawatu Division 1 last year.
Jacque White makes her debut for Eastland Masters’ team this year. White has not represented Eastland since 2002, where she played Senior Division 3 and was one to watch. White was a member of the winning 4th Division team back in 2002, where she played with four of this year’s Masters’ team. They are Debbie Brown, Gabrielle Perano (Wright), Victoria West (Lee) and Mark Beard.
With the start of Masters’ 2019 season being quite early, the team haven’t had too much time to train together as a team, so Brown is hoping her team can dig deep and play to their potential, and if the team can do that, Brown has faith in them.
