No. 1 Humber captures four medals at provincials

TORONTO — Top-ranked Humber badminton left the 2024 OCAA Championships with four medals, including gold in mixed doubles and the overall men's team title. 

Before the tournament began, Humber was honoured with numerous league awards, headlined by rookie Timothy Lock. Lock became the seventh player in program history to be named the Male Player of the Year while earning a CCAA All-Canadian selection. Second-year head coach Chloe Rowe was named the Coach of the Year - becoming the first Humber coach to earn the award since Lam Trinh earned the honour in 2010.

The mixed duo of Zeel Rohit and Gokulkrishna Santhoshkumar were named to the all-star team, with Lock were Glorinelle Questin, Fred Houle, Dhruvkumar Raval, and Ayushi Vasava.

Championship Recap

Mixed Doubles

Centennial and Humber met once again in the finals, this year it was Gokul Kumar and Zeel Rohit from Humber who would go on to win in a convincing two-game sweep over Centennial's Roney Roy and Ranjana Bhatt 21-15 and 21-16. With the Colts settling for silver, Sadik Ali and Marla Betts from Conestoga would upset Jason Kao and Vaness Lam from Seneca to take home the bronze, winning in dominant fashion 21-14 and 21-12.

Men's Doubles

Arpi Sinha and Roshan Jacob from Fanshawe were working in perfect synchronicity on Saturday. After sweeping their semi-final match against George Brown's Ken Ayco and Henry Chan (21-11, 21-13), they would go up against West Region All-Star from Humber Dhruh Raval and Fred Houle, sweeping them in two games (21-11, 21-19) to secure gold. Seneca's Anthony Tso and Eric Peng would get revenge in the bronze medal match.

Men's Singles

After pushing East Division Player of the Year Colin Zhou to a three-set match in the semi-finals, Maneet Bindra from St. Lawrence College regained his composure, winning in two straight games over Val Wong from Seneca (21-15, 21-15). In the highly anticipated final match, Zhou and Timothy Lock went head to head. Lock, reigning OCAA Player of the Year, previously defeated Zhou at Fanshawe and defeated during this tournament in round-robin play. Whether it was by design or just the heart of a champion, Zhou showed why he's the defending national champion. After losing the first game, Zhou and Lock would go the wire in game two, with Zhou pulling away to win. It would take the final game to determine the champion. Both players were visibly exhausted, Lock looked to be favouring his left leg. At this point, Zhou put on the after-burners to pull ahead, winning the final game and the provincial title, 21-13. The final score was (15-21, 21-17, 21-13). With the win, Zhou defends his title and a rare chance to go back-to-back as champion.