CREDIT: FANSHAWE ATHLETICS
Arpitraj Sinha (pictured) helped lead the Falcons to a third-place finish at Fanshawe Badminton Invitational.

Fanshawe recently hosted its 32nd annual badminton invitational.

The event was hosted at the Glenn Johnston Athletic Centre, where third-year Arpitraj Sinha led the Falcons to a third-place finish following the men’s singles ‘A’ flight quarterfinal match with 21-8 and 21-14 victories.

“It was awesome,” said Sinha. “When any one of us was playing, we had each other’s backs. There’s a lot of pressure behind these games, especially when it’s a home match.”


He would later drop the semi-final match to Humber.

This comes after a successful year for Sinha in the 2022/2023 season, where he was named a west region all-star, awarded as the OCAA men’s badminton west region player of the year, as well as capturing the bronze medal at the CCAA national championships.

“Obviously the last year was personally good for me, but what I want to do is bring back gold in nationals for the college. I wasn’t satisfied with what happened, so my off-season was spent working on the weaknesses that I exposed.”

Roshan Jacob would also perform well but fell in a three-game match to Seneca in the men’s flight ‘A’ quarterfinal round.

The duo of Sinha and Jacob would team up in the men’s double competition and win three matches before being defeated by the men’s double champions from Humber in the flight ‘A’ semi-final match.

In the women’s doubles flight ‘A’ competition, Eugene Kim and Xinyi Ge lost in the quarterfinal round to Humber.

Aniket Ramrupwad and Eryn Long were crowned the mixed doubles consolation champions after winning four consecutive matches and were triumphant 21-16 and 21-15 in the final match.

Key plays by Jacob and Lalaine Siy would secure their second-place finish in the flight ‘B’ consolation competition.

“This might be my last year at Fanshawe, so one of the things I want to achieve is team bonding,” said Sinha. “Last year was a bit all over the place, but from the looks of it, it’s already going a lot better than last year. The team is showing that they care not only about the badminton aspect, but also being a part of a team.”

Fanshawe’s badminton team will be back in action on Dec. 9 and 10 at the George Brown College Invitational tournament, with Sinha saying this will be a good gauge of their overall skills.

“George Brown is not only a college invitational tournament, it’s also an open tournament,” he said. “It’ll be a lot tougher than other competitions we have. Players from Indonesia, Singapore, China will all be coming to play.”

He went on to talk about some of his goals for the tougher matches coming up.

“There will be tougher players all around, playing against players who honestly may be better than me. My goal is to improve my mental strength, my speed, and my consistency when I’m behind.”

Ultimately, he said that while he wants to replicate and further some of his successes from last year, his main focus is on finishing this season with a well-developed team bond.

“My main thing is to have fun with the team. The team this year is awesome, so whatever happens I just want to have fun and know that I’ll have good memories with them.”