Badminton Buffs Have a New Venue

With schoolchildren back in class, the Northbrook Park District has added something extra for adults that could bring back some memories and alleviate stress. 

Badminton, anyone?

At Glenbrook North High School, badminton nets and equipment will be available for drop-in games from 7 -8:30 p.m. Thursdays for residents age 14 and older. The program joins the park district's regular fall offering of soccer, lacrosse and flag football team sports that start Sept. 11.

"This is new to the district, and is primarily for adults,'' said Jeff Collier, assistant manager of athletics and aquatics for the park district. "We have a phenomenal badminton coach over at GBN and he approached us about offering something for the public.

"We think it is going to be pretty interesting. There is a growing population for badminton," Collier said.

The program is open to all comers, with park district taking care of the hard part of getting the nets up and tight as well as encouraging players.

"Maybe people can pick up a new sport,'' Collier said.

The park district has also expanded its flag football program to include interested seventh- and eighth-graders. It had offered participation to children in grades 3-6.

The district has started a new "friendship request procedure" for soccer and flag football that allows parents to request a specific teammate, Collier said, noting every effort will be made to grant requests.

"It is obviously customer friendly, but it does get difficult when you get too many requests,'' he said.

The lacrosse program has a house league and a travel league, but players must first sign up for the house league to participate in the travel league.

Registration continues through Sept. 15 for the sports programs. As of Aug. 31, there were 204 participants for flag football, 613 for house soccer and 94 for lacrosse.