Orpington Junior Badminton Club

Members and Costs

Orpington Juniors has always been a non-profit making coaching organisation. We hire the Priory Sports Centre in Orpington as the home for all our coaching and playing activities, developing an excellent relationship with them. The Priory have a large 3 court badminton hall with halogen lighting and a fully sprung wooden floor. The annual subscription, which is £95 this season for 30 weeks (60 hours) of coaching, represents the minimum (breakeven) cost of hall hire plus shuttles. Coaches have never received remuneration of any kind for their time and the club is therefore entirely volunteer-based. Our junior membership is currently around 100, distributed approximately evenly across the 6 class structure, and with the age range from around 8 to 16.

Coaches

A key strength of the club is both the quality and depth of its coaching team and coach development programme, which represents one of the largest, if not the largest, in Kent. Led by Head Coach and BADMINTON England Tutor/Assessor Paul Parham (Coach (Part 2) and currently upgrading to UKCC Level 3), Orpington Juniors currently has 32 Coaches and Assistant Coaches. All coaches and volunteers (regardless of qualification status) are CRB cleared at Enhanced Level and this is a rigorously enforced aspect of our Child Protection Policy (as set out in the Club Constitution).

Seniors

In addition to our Junior Club structure, our Senior Club is also thriving and serves a number of important roles within the club. As well as providing considerable playing opportunities for adults (both competitive and more social players), our Senior Club evening is structured to form an important bridge between juniors nearing the top of the junior Club Pathway and adult/local league badminton. We currently enter two teams in the local leagues, with a team specifically entered in a lower division to enable juniors with the appropriate skills and maturity/experience to play alongside a coach or other experienced adult player in adult league badminton. In addition to this competitive aspect to the Senior Club, however, is a very friendly and social club evening where both members and non-members are extremely welcome, with the latter offered a simple pay-and-play arrangement. One of our Lead Coaches is also the Junior Affairs Officer for the Orpington/North West Kent League, with wide ranging responsibilities including organising teams for the Kent Inter-Regional Competition.

Website: www.orpingtonjuniors.com

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