The University of Auckland Waipapa Taumata Rau Make it Five in a Row

The Zhu Badminton Centre was buzzing with anticipation on Saturday morning as teams in both the Championship and Cup divisions filtered through its doors. The event is unique in its format as the top university teams from across Aotearoa battle it out in the National Tertiary Badminton Championship on one side of the hall while tertiary club and social teams fight for the Tertiary Badminton Cup on the other.

The University of Auckland began this year’s National Tertiary Badminton Championship as top seed thanks to their formidable line-up and quickly showed why, progressing through their three day-one ties without losing a single match.

Victoria University of Wellington also proved their credentials, moving past tough challenges from the University of Waikato and University of Canterbury to get through day one undefeated. Victoria’s Bevan coxed summed up the team’s attitude after claiming a tight first round victory, explaining, “We just managed to hold our nerve there at the end which just got us over the line, so pretty happy”.

In the Tertiary Badminton Cup, the Otago Campus Badminton Club was well-represented with three teams participating, the Otago Backcourt Big Guys and Otago Racketeers looking the strongest. At the end of pool play on day one, Pool B was extremely tight as three teams finished on the same record of two wins and one loss with D’Ace (University of Canterbury) claiming top seed for the finals thanks to a superior tiebreaker.

Day two brought with it the big ticket match-ups, with the University of Canterbury defeating the University of Waikato in the day’s first tie to lock up the bronze medal in the Championship division.

That left the title to be decided by the final match-up between the top two seeds and the only undefeated teams – the University of Auckland and Victoria University of Wellington – with the Aucklanders stepping up the intensity to reclaim the shield with a dominant 5-0 performance. Calling on fresh legs for each of their matches, Auckland showed their depth and experience to ensure they finished the tournament without dropping a match.

The victory made it five National Tertiary Badminton Championship titles in a row for the powerful University of Auckland team, and eight in total. “It was a really great team effort, we wouldn’t have been able to do it without the team” explained Auckland’s Isaac Chan after completing the victory.

The Cup headed towards a much tighter finish as D’Ace and the Otago Racketeers won through to the Grand Final, bringing on a rematch from pool play. The teams traded matches as the Racketeers won the men’s singles and men’s doubles while D’Ace won the women’s singles and women’s doubles. The tie of the tournament culminated in the mixed doubles, the pair of Zi Shun Gan and Angie Tan Fui Jie from D’Ace winning the match and with it the Tertiary Badminton Cup for 2024.

All game results and scores from the tournament can be accessed here.

Action from the National Tertiary Badminton Championship can be re-lived by watching the court 2 live stream on the UTSNZ YouTube channel, while event photos can be viewed and downloaded on the UTSNZ Flickr page.

The National Tertiary Championship series continues in only two weeks’ time, with the National Tertiary 3x3 Championship in Rolleston, Christchurch. Follow along on the UTSNZ social media pages and the live stream action on UTSNZ TV.

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