Jamaica, Mexico lead CAC badminton
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This is a digitised version of an article from The Cayman Compass's print archive. Occasionally, the digitisation process introduces transcription errors, or other problems.
See the article in its original context from November 1990.
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Chris Cole of the Cayman men beat his Aruba opponent, Michael Williams, despite Williams' constant attempts at gamesmanship. Williams went from holding up the game to complaining to the referee about calls. In the end, it didn't stop Coles from concentrating on a 15-2, 17-14 win. Coles came back from a 12-14 deficit in the second game to clinch it in the tiebreaker.
There were other highlights in the Cayman draw against Aruba with the ladies doubles team of Ronette Dixon and Charlene LeBlanc taking the Aruban pair to three games.
After losing a tight first game, 10-15, the Cayman ladies took the second one easily at 15-6, before losing the finale, 15-4.
"Whatever we did in the second game, we just didn't do in the third," said LeBlanc.
Cayman showed promise in the Aruba matches and appeared to dominate play, but lacked the competitive edge to take the matches. The same could be said for their first match in the team competition against Trinidad and Tobago.
There, Coles let the first set slip away against Sheldon Calarron by losing the tiebreaker in the first game after first going up 2-0. In the second game, it was no contest as Calarron won, 15-0. "I guess I was just too casual," Coles said afterward.
Cayman looked a little unsettled in the morning clash against Trinidad and Tobago; still finding their feet after retraining with the high roof-which at the competition hall in Coyacan is twice the size of any in Cayman and resembles an aircraft hanger in its spaciousness.
Against more evenly matched opponents-Aruba-the team gained some confidence and their play improved with less obvious mistakes.
After Tuesday's competition, the Cayman Islands bring up the rear of their table and play favourites Mexico on Wednesday morning. What they face worse than any opponent is official incompetence.
Both Aruba and Cayman were vocal in their outcry against both umpire and linesman in their matches.
The Mexican officials appeared to go beyond the usual bad calls with a lack of knowledge of the game. Cole found himself being served to twice after by his Aruban opponent in the men's doubles when Aruba had already lost the point with the score at 14-all.
"Can you believe that," he said afterwards. "I tried telling him (the ref) but he doesn't speak any English."
LeBlanc and Dixon found their ladies doubles game stopped at 11 points when the game was supposed to go to 15 in their match. "We played to 15 this morning. I thought maybe there were some new rules," Le Blanc said. "None of the officials knew the game," she added.
