The 2025 School Badminton Tournament

 Orla Sabine Sery

Huong and Ovi, the winners of the girls badminton finals, with their prizes. 

On November 12, 2025, Katedralskolan’s badminton club held a tournament for all students interested in participating and showcasing their badminton skills. It was hosted collaboratively by Huong Nguyen, Olivia Mattsson Clark, Lisa Möller and Liepa Petrauskaite at Högevall from 12:30 until 16:00. Quite a crowd arrived for the games, some competing, some refereeing, and some simply watching for their own entertainment. Even a few students from the Swedish programs took part, which is a rare sight as almost all students in the badminton club are from the diploma programme! All in all, it was a brilliant showcasing of the engaged community in the IB diploma program. 

  It has been a while since Katedraskolan has had its very own badminton tournament as the last one was all the way back in 2023, when the current DP2s were in PDP. According to Olivia Mattsson Clark, who was one of the hosts and a former PDP student herself, seeing the 2023 badminton tournament inspired her and her friends to host their own tournament some day. The tournament would also count as a CAS project, which, of course, gave the hosts an extra incentive to host it. After a lot of planning and advertising, such as putting up posters around the school and asking members of the badminton club to spread the word to their friends, the tournament was finally scheduled. The school helped fund the tournament by paying for the time slots at Högevall. 

  Halfway through the tournament, we asked the hosts if they were satisfied with the games thus far. They confirmed that they were mostly content with how the tournament was going, however Olivia did remark that the beginning of the games were a bit disorganized. This seemed to be a sentiment shared by some participants as well. When interviewing a player about what could have gone better with the games, he said that the pairing up of teams who would play against each other was a bit confusing. He went on to explain that he and his teammate were competing against another team who had only played one game at that point, while his team had already played three. This didn’t make much sense, according to him. 

  Since it was decided that girls and boys wouldn’t compete against each other, there had to be two finals: one being played by the female finalists and the other played by the male finalists. After many hard-fought games that were to determine who would make it to the end, Huong and Ovi made it to the final game for the girls, along with Hania and Tehreem. For the boys final, Lokesh and Tristan ended up playing against Ibrahim and Arhaan. 

  Ladies always go first, so the first finals was Ovi and Huong playing against Hania and Tehreem. The first game resulted in a 21-10 score, with Huong and Ovi winning thanks to some spectacular smashes on their part. After another hard game, which saw many impressive saves from Hania and Tehreem, Huong and Ovi won once again with 21-10 and became the winners of the girls badminton tournament!

  It is worth noting that during the second game between the girls, we received a sports commentator, namely Jordan. This added an air of professionalism to the tournament, as well as aiding the audience in understanding what was happening on the court. 

  After the girls finals it was time for the boys, which saw Ibrahim and Arhaan playing against Tristan and Lokesh. The first game was intense, with Tristan and Lokesh having some incredibly fast hits which resulted in them winning 21-7. The second game was more neck-and-neck, and at one point Ibrahim and Arhaan almost caught up with their opponents when the score was 9-7. However, after another gripping game, Tristan and Lokesh won once again with 21-8, making them the victors of the boys badminton tournament!

  The grand prizes for both the winning teams were 2 free cinema tickets, one for each player, as well as some bags of candy. When asking Huong how she felt about her victory, she told us: “Me and my team have been organising this for a very long time, and because of that it feels very rewarding that we have won”. 

Participating in the tournament was a fun experience, and watching the games was very engaging. I would definitely be willing to take part in a future tournament! It is for sure something that I would recommend others to check out as well. 

That being said, congratulations to all the winners of this year's badminton tournament, and well played to everyone else who participated!