by Dave Delgado

Guam - Guam will hopefully see a fairly old sport added to the list of federations under the GNOC. Badminton will be revived into the middle and high school levels PE classes with the help of Sandra Low and other physical education teachers from around the island.

Low said, "The experience has been just back yard playing but all that changed in the Olympics when I actually had first hand knowledge experience in the high competitive side of Badminton. So when we went down to Fiji for the ONAC meeting last February the president of the GNOC Rick Blas asked me to look into perhaps introducing badminton to Guam. I just jumped at the chance because the profile of a badminton player as well as the popularity of badminton is so close to our region, Saipan has really grown in it's badminton population so I figured it should be a nice match for us Guam people."

The sport was popular in the high school level back in the 70's but never officially held competitions or leagues. Sandra Low is spearheading the movement of getting the sport to become a federation under the GNOC and hopefully having players represent Guam in international competitions.

She added, "Once that is official then we can tap into the development program that is available at the international level, the regional level as well as the NOC. So that's really crucial to having an official representation. Secondly is that we wanted to begin this at the grass roots level so we are trying to reach out to all the PE teachers in the middle school and possibly the high school in upcoming events. The development officer will be coming in October, so for all you PR teachers out there we would like you to be interested in joining us."