Neelin badminton duo captures provincial gold

It turns out Leonides McDaniel and Dana Linov weren’t just the best high school badminton duo in Brandon this year.

The Neelin Spartans mixed doubles team continued their undefeated run through the city championships at provincials, sweeping Jeanne-Sauve’s Surabhi Kishore and Quinn Lagacé 21-15, 21-13 in the gold-medal match in Winnipeg on Saturday.

They dropped just one set all season to the No. 1-ranked Fort Richmond squad in their semifinal, a match McDaniel said should have been the final. When they survived the scare, topping Xiaolin Liu and Yijia Sun 21-13, 18-21, 21-12, they weren’t worried about their final matchup.

“They were solid, but honestly, I felt like me and Dana were very confident going into that game,” McDaniel said.

Added Linov: “After the first set, I just knew we had it in the bag.”

The Jeanne-Sauve team fought to the end before McDaniel’s smash ended a 30-shot rally and a 47-year drought of provincial champions from Brandon — per source, Neelin’s Claude Pellerin was the last to capture gold.

“That rally was the best rally of the whole game, a 30-shot rally, but at the end when I smashed it, you could tell by our celebration we were super happy to win,” McDaniel said.

It was their second season competing together, and they set a high bar after earning a provincial bronze medal last year.

Linov is a multi-sport athlete, who primarily plays volleyball and was named MVP as the Spartans captured a AAA JV provincial title two years ago.

Badminton is McDaniel’s main sport, as he grew up in as big a badminton family as you’ll find in Westman. His father, Karl, coaches the Neelin team, while his brothers Lucien and Quintus were both standout players for the Spartans.

Leonides travels to Winnipeg almost every weekend to train at Prairie Badminton, so he had a good idea of what to expect when he and Linov qualified.

“The competition in Winnipeg is definitely a lot better than the competition in Brandon, and I felt like we knew that going in. We were not overconfident,” he said.

“We’ve done a lot of tournaments together so over time we learned to adapt to how we play. It was easy playing together,” Linov added.

“Leo would be in the back, I’d be in the front. We worked on our rotations a lot and made sure I’m not in the back because obviously Leo has a harder smash than I would.”

McDaniel and Linov are back in action for one more provincial championship when they look to defend their high school pickleball title next week.

In JV mixed doubles badminton, Birtle’s Tiffany Brown and Brody Lane earned a bronze medal as the lone other Westman team to hit the podium.

They led the Falcons to the JV A/AA team title, bringing home the school’s first banner in 24 years.

» tfriesen@brandonsun.com