A TALENTED West Fife badminton starlet is confident her game will improve after being selected for the national senior squad.
Brooke Stalker, 17, has been handed a place in the Badminton Scotland pool of elite players for the next 12 months, as well as sportscotland’s Institute of Sport programme.
Current Badminton Scotland National Championships, under-19 ladies doubles winner (pictured above) Brooke, the niece of the late Scotland international, and Commonwealth Games bronze medallist, Russell Hogg, joins a crop of players within the senior squad that are “deemed to have potential to medal on the Commonwealth, European and World stage”.
She has been invited onto the initiative for the forthcoming year, having last month, and travels to the National Badminton Academy, in Glasgow, to participate in training sessions.
Not all players who are invited into the senior squad are guaranteed to receive nominations for places in sportscotland’s Institute of Sport programme, with athletes who are successful in joining the initiative having access to areas such as strength and conditioning coaching and physiotherapy.
They will work with Brooke’s Badminton Scotland coaches to tailor an individual programme to ensure she is best prepared to perform in doubles and mixed doubles competitions.
Speaking to Press Sport, the Dunfermline star said: “It’s been good. It’s a different environment; everyone’s at least four years older than me. I’m the baby of the group!
“The training intensity’s obviously a lot higher but, because I was in England (she was awarded a badminton scholarship at the Webber Independent School, in Milton Keynes, in 2019), I’d gotten used to that.
“I didn’t really expect it. I thought it maybe be about a year, two years (away), but I got a phone call from my head coach just now, who’s the senior development (squad) head coach, and he just basically said that I had a senior place. Then, a few weeks later, I got the email that I’d got an Institute of Sport place.
“This is the highest squad you can get to. You’ve got your junior national squads, you’ve got your senior development squads, which I was in, and then you’ve got your senior national team. You can’t really go any further than that.
“That’s your Commonwealth team; everyone’s in there. All your top people are in there, and there’s only five girls in that right now, for doubles, so I’m the sixth girl coming in.
“It’s good for me because not a lot of people get that chance.”
Brooke, who won her first senior title in ladies doubles at January’s Babolat Dunfermline Badminton Championships, added: “It’’ll bring my level up again, hitting with a higher intensity, so hopefully it will make my game better.”
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