RADLETT’S Helena Lewczynska wants to turn good performances into great ones after her brief outing at the Yonex All England Open Badminton Championships in Birmingham.
The 21-year-old and women’s doubles partner Sophie Brown lost in the first round of qualifying to Indonesian pair Vita Marissa and Aprilsasi Lejarsar Variella at the NIA.
But Lewczynska admitted the experience of playing in one of the biggest tournaments in the world in Birmingham has only steeled her resolve to build a career in badminton.
“The target is to keep playing the lower-level European tournaments as we’re only two years out of juniors,” said Lewczynska – who is studying at Leeds Metropolitan University.
“We want to play some international series and challengers and we want to do well in those. We want to try and get medals in those where we can.
“We’ve been playing on the European circuit for two years, so if we can get a medal, that’s probably the main goal for this season and next season.
“Playing at the All England Open has definitely whetted my appetite to get stuck into bigger tournaments, though it’s probably going to take us a long time to get to another.
“If we can keep working, and work our way up to bigger tournaments, it’d be great.”
Lewczynska and Brown were on court at the NIA for just 20 minutes as Lejarsar Variella and Marissa won the first set 21-13 and then the second 21-9.
And Lewczynska identified afterwards what she and Brown need to do in order to start picking up results against more experienced senior opponents.
“I’m not disappointed at all – I think it was a really good experience to have,” she added. “They’re a really high level, much higher than us, so there’s loads to take away from it.
“The lessons we learned are probably a better return of serve and getting used to those types of conditions.
“It was quite slow and it took us a long time to get to us, and we’re really not used to that. It’s something we need to work on – keeping our speed up when the conditions are slow.
“The more competitions you do in this type of thing, the better you’re going to get at it. The more big arenas and big competitions we play in, the easier we’ll be able to find it, and we’ll adapt to it.”
Badminton is the fastest and most popular racket sport in England. Major events are fundamental to raising its awareness. For further information on future badminton championships in England visit www.badmintonengland.co.uk
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