Rising Davidstown starlet reaches first Senior final
LISBURN WAS the venue for the Irish Senior badminton championship, and the success story of Wexford's Laura Butler continued as the young Davidstown player reached her first national senior final when she and partner Jennifer King qualified for the ladies' doubles decider.
Laura also made the semi-finals of the ladies' singles and has the honour of being Wexford's first representative in the national finals since Maeve Moynihan back in the 1980s.
After a series of impressive results in recent tournaments, Laura and Jennifer King were the second seeds going into the ladies' doubles, and the Wexford/Dublin pairing maintained their recent good form to reach the final against the defending champions and Irish Internationals, Karen Bing and Keelin Fox.
The top seeds, Bing and Fox, were taking no chances against the pretenders to their throne and called on all their firepower and experience to retain their title with a 2111, 21-8 victory.
Laura advanced to the semi-finals of the ladies' singles where she lost in straight sets to the number two seed, Sinéad Chambers, 21-7, 21-12.
It was a good weekend of badminton all round for Butler who, with partner William Gourley, also qualified for the mixed doubles quarter-final before losing to the third seeds, Mark Topping and Keelin Fox, 21-17, 21-19.
In the men's singles, Alan Mackay lost in the opening round when going down 21-17, 21-18 to Conor Hickland.
After some fine performances of late, Vincent Mackay will be disappointed with his opening venture in the nationals as the Eagles player was below par when losing 21-3, 21-10 in the opening round to Stuart Lightbody.
In the men's doubles, brothers Vincent and Alan Mackay turned in a fine performance and were very unlucky to lose out in the opening round to Graham Davidson and William Gourley (29-27, 2116).
