Chicago's Near West Side Community Development Corporation (NWS CDC) had their fourth annual Spring Break Olympics, a community event in the Near West Side/West Heaven just near the United Center in Chicago city. The Spring Break sports camp helps keep youth engaged in fun, safe activities during their Spring Break and allows them to learn about and try new sports, compete in community sports tournaments and participate in workshops on health, wellness and nutrition. For this event, groups within the community apply for time slots and attend as a group. BadmintonChicago, a volunteer supported organization in Chicago, (http://badmintonchicago.org ) demonstrated and introduced about 100 participants to Badminton on April 5, Thursday, 12noon-4pm. This event was organized by World Sport Chicago (WSC) and the City of Chicago. Equipment and gifts were provided by Yonex.
We started the demonstration at 12 noon and the volunteers setup the nets and stands. There were no lines but we improvised! We estimate that about 50 kids in the ages of 10 to 15 participated in the demonstration. There was boxing, basketball and archery going on at the same time in the gym and things got a bit chaotic at times but again the volunteers improvised! We also held a mini-tournament for 20 kids with two winners getting a Yonex badminton racket and shuttle set to take home. We gave out Yonex water bottles or caps to all tournament participants. The demonstration ended at 4:00pm. It was satisfying to see kids enjoy playing badminton and at the end of the day ask us if we were going to do it again or if they could have it in their school. We hope World Sports Chicago can persuade the Chicago Public Schools to make badminton a regular sport at some of the schools in the city of Chicago.
BadmintonChicago would like to thank the Volunteers (especially Paige, Yin, Ahmad and Nae) and Yonex (especially Eric, Derrick, Yoshi and Hiro) for making this Demonstration a success.
Photos from the event are here:
https://picasaweb.google.com/100076591719014994722/BadmintonDemoChicago
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