Editorial
12-09-2021
The new season of the Eredivisie has started again and VELO Badminton started last Saturday evening in Almere.
For a moment, VELO seemed to have a draw in the last mixed doubles, but unfortunately the Almere duo came back very strong and the score ended in a 3-5 loss to the Wateringers. This puts VELO in sixth place in the ranking after the first round.
Exciting rally’s
Jim Middelburg and Nick Fransman started a strong first set of the men’s doubles in a well-filled sports hall. Their opponents Alex Vlaar and Timo Stoffelen came back and won the second set. This tied the score again, but in the decisive third set the men of VELO turned out to be able to go one step further and won this exciting final set 21-17.
In the women’s doubles, Myke Halkema and Fredrika Lagerstedt faced a difficult task and Olympian Cheryl Seinen and Kirsten de Wit proved too strong for the Wateringers in two sets. This resulted in a 1-1 tie.
After the doubles it was the turn of the singles. Almere was predominantly the dominant party here. Dion Rovers and Hanna Couwenhoven both played a nice single with long exciting rallies and a lot of fighting spirit, but unfortunately had to recognize their superiority in the Almere opponents. Fredrika Lagerstedt cleverly took the first set. Unfortunately, the strong Ieva Pope came back from a big deficit and won the second set in the nick of time and continued into the third game. Fortunately Nick Fransman took the win with a very nice match. He beat Sebastiaan Li with convincing numbers to make it 2-4.
Clear figures
Finally, the mixed doubles came up, and the VELO’ers were eager to win them. Jim Middelburg and Myke Halkema played an exciting first set against Alex Vlaar and Kirsten de Wit, but luckily took the win 21-19. Jim and Myke also showed their best side in the second set and put the score at 3-4. Ruben Kweekel and Veda Diemel started with a surprising win in the first set and a draw seemed just as close. Unfortunately, Timo Stoffelen and Cheryl Seinen came back very strong and won the second and third set with clear numbers, resulting in a final score of 3-5.
VELO continues with a tough start to the schedule and next weekend the strong Duijnwijck from Haarlem is on the schedule. Duinwijck-VELO will start on Saturday 18 September at 19.00. Just like against Almere, the players of VELO will have to do everything they can to be able to go home with the win after this match. The following weekend, on Saturday September 25 at 7:00 PM, they will play their first home game of the season against The Hague club DKC.
