On March 2nd & 3rd, the 2000-2001 OUA badminton playoffs were being held at the University of Toronto. In previous years only the top 4 teams made the playoffs, but this year the top 6 teams make the playoffs. The best team in the east and the best team in the west earned a bye into the semi-finals.
After the regular season, the playoff contenders were seeded as follows ...
Seed
Team
1
Western
2
Ottawa
3
York
4
Queen's
5
Toronto
6
Waterloo
Teams in yellow earned a 1st round bye.
Since the Gee Gee's had a bye to the semi-finals, we spent Friday, March 2nd travelling while the teams seeded 3 to 6 competed for a birth in the semi-finals. Ottawa was waiting for the winner of York vs. Waterloo, while Western was waiting for the winner of Queen's vs. Toronto. Both York and Queen's were able to defend their seeds by defeating their opponents 8-3. The top 4 seeds had advanced to the semi-finals with #1 matched up against #4, and #2 against #3.
Saturday was semi-finals and championship final day. Although there were some close matches, #1 Western was able to advance to the finals relatively easily by defeating the #4 seeded Queen's, 9 matches to 2.
The Gee Gee's challenger in the semi-finals was #3 seeded York. We had disposed of the #3 seeds two weeks prior to the playoffs, 9-2. But this time York put up a much stiffer fight. Our men were unable to win any of their singles matches, but thanks to Anh Chu, Tania Perron, and Isabelle Proulx, we were all tied up after the 6 singles matches, 3-3. Although it seemed like the tie might go down to the wire, Ottawa's doubles dominated York's pairs by winning 4 of the 5 doubles matches. The pairings of Anh Chu & Jenny Kue, Lucky Gunaratnam & Gary Wan, Jeff Wolak & Thomas Lam, and Jeff Wolak & Jenny Kue were responsible for finishing off the #3 seeds. After 4.5 hours of competition, the Gee Gee's were in the finals with a 7-4 victory.
In the championship match with Western there was great anticipation of a possible upset by the Gee Gee's from everyone in the gym. This was the first meeting of the season where Ottawa had all their top members available for the competition. The Gee Gee's knew they would need to win 3 of the 6 singles matches to have a chance at the title and came prepared to work hard to do so. Western knew going into the competition that Ottawa would be their toughest competition and they were a bit worried since they had not seen Ottawa's full line up all year, nor had they had a chance to play against it.
After dropping both the men's and women's #1 singles, Ottawa's #2 men's singles, Gary Wan pulled through in an exciting hard fought match to win in extra points and get the first win for the Gee Gee's: 15-5, 17-14. Team member Bryan Chen felt that Gary's match was the most exciting of the tie as he gave Ottawa a jumpstart for a possible upset.
Ottawa lost #2 women's singles, however our rookie star Isabelle Proulx picked off the #3 women's singles for the Gee Gee's in two straight games, making the score 3 matches to 2 for Western. This puts Ottawa's chances at the gold medal upset in the hands of #3 men's singles player Terry Lo. Terry fought hard in long rallies, excellent exchanges, and exciting competition. The match lasted a full 3 games with exceptionally loud cheering by both teams. The gym was absolutely electric! Both teams realized that the match would be a pivotal one if Ottawa prevailed. The match went into extra points in the final game with Terry finally succumbing to Western's #3 singles 15-12, 6-15, 15-17. Team member Brian Kormos congratulated both Gary Wan and Terry Lo for their excellent efforts and great play by "honoring us with entertaining and exciting badminton".
Despite Ottawa being down 2-4, the tie continued with strong efforts from all team members. However Western ended up taking the victory and the gold medal with a score of 9-2. The Western team gave the Ottawa team full credit for the excellent team efforts. Although the results did not reflect it, everyone on the Ottawa team obviously came to play, and played their hearts out and played for every point.
Congratulations to Jenny Kue, Lakshman Gunaratnam, and Jeff Wolak for being nominated to the OUA badminton all-star team. Consistantly strong play was evident throughout the season by Anh Chu, Tania Perron, Jenny Kue, Isabelle Proulx, Lakshman Gunaratnam, Gary Wan, Terry Lo, Jeff Wolak, and Thomas Lam. But our success would not be possible without the contributions of everyone on the team.
Ottawa's head coach, Dominic Soong was delighted with the team effort, team spirit, and energy of all team members. Our players worked hard and played their best, however a better team beat us - on that particular day. We would obviously have preferred to win the gold medal, however that would have been a very big upset. Coach Soong is very pleased with the team's efforts, individual performances, and very pleased with the overall development of all the team players whose individual skill levels improved significantly during the year.
To summarize our season, the Gee Gee's badminton team would just like to say that "Gee Gee's are like ... WHOH!!!"
