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Douglas College sends all eight to college badminton nationals

Ruilin Huang will look to win an unprecedented fourth Canadian Colleges' women's singles title this year.

Ruilin Huang will look to win an unprecedented fourth Canadian Colleges' women's singles title this year.

The defending three-time national collegiate champion and player of the year won her fourth straight PacWest badminton title, sweeping the combined opposition in straight sets at the provincial championships at Thompson Rivers University on Sunday.

Charmagne Yeung and Logan Campbell also made a clean sweep of the mixed doubles, winning all five matches in straight sets to take the provincial title.

Defending national doubles champion Lou Wei and fifth-year transfer Simon Wu picked up a third B.C. title for the New Westminster college, placing first overall in the men's doubles.

"I was happy with the men's doubles," said Douglas head coach Al Mawani. "They had struggled since the fall. But they took responsibility for themselves and won the Seattle Open two weeks ago, which was a fantastic result for them."

Wei and Wu lost the opening game to the eventual third-place Capilano University pair of Tony Chen and Mark Chang of Burnaby in the finals. The Douglas pair also dropped a game to the North Shore school in the team event held Saturday.

The Royals' silver medal men's singles and women's doubles team also qualified for the upcoming national collegiate championships, which will be held in Kamloops this year.

Freshman Bob Sharma of New Westminster and first-year Lisa Chen and third-year Amy Leung will enter the nationals as Team B.C. 2, owing to the host school receiving a second berth.

Sharma placed second in the men's singles behind Langara College's Luke Couture in a close 21-14, 19-21, 21-19 final.

The Douglas women's doubles team of Chen and Leung qualified second behind the Capilano pairing of Veronica Yeung and Rosalynn Chong by a score of 21-7, 21-19.

But Mawani is confident that the men's singles final at the nationals should be the decisive match between the two champions.

"The men's singles will be a fight. Both men have won two times this year," said Mawani. "We're looking forward to it. Once you qualify, anything can happen. We have a chance."

Douglas also won the provincial team event, sweeping Kwantlen, Langara and host TRU by the same 5-0 score, while dropping a single game to both Capilano and Vancouver Island universities in round-robin play.

The Royals racked up wins in 23 of 25 matches in the five disciplines against the opposition schools in Saturday's team competition, garnering 386 total points in the fourth PacWest tournament this season.

Douglas also swept all three previous tournaments this year to post a grand aggregate score of 1,477, far outdistancing second-place Capilano by more than 350 points in combined scoring.

"To have all eight players qualify (for the nationals), you can't say anything more," Mawani added.

The Canadian college nationals will be hosted in Kamloops and runs from March 1 to 4.