In the fight for the favor of the athletes, sports apart from the big players have to reinvent themselves again and again. The direction is often towards fun sport. This is also the case with badminton. TG Friedberg follows this call.
The wind blows strongly over the facility on Friedberger Seewiese. It may be a wonderful summer day, but outdoor sports are just the thing. But whoever wants to unpack his badminton racket has actually lost. And yet a dozen people hit the shuttlecock over the grounds of the TG Friedberg in the heart of the district town. And they even have a lot of fun doing it.
“I had imagined outdoor courts for a long time. Then the new type of game was introduced,” says Marcus Thalheim, department manager at TG. AirBadminton is the name of the variant that makes it possible to play badminton in the open air. In May 2019, the World Badminton Federation presented the project, and a good year later it also arrived in Friedberg. Specially developed shuttlecocks should be easy to play even at wind speeds of up to 12 kilometers per hour.
So they combined the pleasant with the useful. In addition to the tennis courts and the club snack bar on the site, an unused concrete surface eke out its existence. “We used the Corona break to create three AirBadminton fields and three conventional fields,” says Thalheim. Due to the pandemic, the group of helpers was deliberately kept small. “Within four weeks, five people glued 1.5 kilometers of masking tape, spread ten liters of paint and did an endless number of squats. Everyone had sore muscles,” says Thalheim. Every chalker on the soccer field would be very proud of the straight lines. By the way, the TG people made a bargain. “We got the net stands sponsored from Heidelberg as part of a dissolution, they are usually quite expensive,” says Thalheim. In general, the site has been restored, spring cleaning in summer, so to speak.
Up to six players per game possible
The members are happy, and obviously they also have a lot of fun with the variant – at least the laughs in the courts are often longer than the rallies. Fifteen young people came to the official opening of the square, followed by just as many adults. For the majority it was the AirBadminton premiere. Thanks to the floodlights, games continued until late in the evening.
The differences between conventional badminton and the open-air variant are quickly explained: The ball is heavier and less susceptible to wind. Because the front third of your own half may not be entered, the net game does not play a major role in AirBadminton. In addition, in triple, which is also new compared to conventional badminton, you are not allowed to play the ball over the net twice in a row. “The focus is on the fun factor, but of course also on making badminton itself better known,” says Thalheim.
The use of the seats is free of charge for around 1700 TG members; external athletes pay ten euros per hour. “Of course we hope that this will also give us a little bit of advertising for the sport and our department,” says Thalheim. The chances of this seem to be good, because people keep stopping on the secret path that connects Ockstädter Straße with Seewiese and look curiously around the corner.
And so, by the way, the TG people have something that is very rare at the moment. Spectators at the sports facility. Pretty nice again.
