BadminTEEN: A Best‑Practice Model for Advancing Female Teen Participation and Retention in Badminton

Sub Area:

• Participation Programmes
• Gender Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (GEDI)
• Workforce Development

Overview

BadminTEEN, designed and delivered by Badminton Ireland, is a pioneering youth development programme focused on keeping teenage girls engaged in sport by broadening what participation looks like. The initiative introduces girls to multiple roles within badminton, including playing, coaching, officiating, and organising — helping them discover how sport can fit into their lives in fun, meaningful, and non‑pressured ways.

Since launching its pilot phase, BadminTEEN has grown rapidly, expanding across Ireland and reaching more than 1,000 girls to date. The programme has not only increased participation but has also built new youth leadership pipelines, strengthened community connections, and created lasting school‑based badminton ecosystems.

Challenges

Badminton Ireland identified a concerning trend: teenage girls were dropping out of badminton between the ages of 15–18 at disproportionately high rates.

Key issues identified included:

• A perception that badminton had become overly competitive and no longer fun.
• Limited pathways for girls who did not aspire to be high‑performance athletes.
• Loss of social connection when friends stopped playing.
• Inflexible training structures that clashed with schoolwork and exam schedules.
• Coaching styles that didn’t always resonate with teenage girls.
• In some cases, limited access to adequate sports facilities.

These insights highlighted the need for a flexible, inclusive, and social programme that recognised girls’ diverse motivations and barriers.

Actions Taken

Badminton Ireland adopted a phased, research‑based approach to develop a programme that genuinely reflected participants’ needs. This approach ensured that BadminTEEN was not only effective but scalable and sustainable.

Badminton Ireland began by analysing membership trends and engaging directly with girls in schools and clubs to understand drop‑off patterns and underlying reasons for disengagement. This informed the creation of a multi‑pathway programme that blended fun, skill development, leadership, and wellbeing.

Key actions undertaken included:

• Researching Participation Behaviours: Reviewed membership data and identified ages with the highest female dropout rates and conducted surveys and facilitated open conversations with teenage girls to understand their real experiences.
• Designing a Multi‑Pathway Programme: Introduced components covering playing, coaching, officiating, rules education, and wellbeing and integrated the BWF Shuttle Time leadership course to build coaching foundations and confidence.
• Tutor Training and Quality Control: Selected and trained tutors to deliver the programme effectively and implemented a shadowing system to standardise delivery across schools and clubs.
• Adapting to School Contexts: Redesigned certain modules for classroom delivery where hall availability was limited to ensure classroom sessions were interactive and avoided an “academic class” feel.
• Rolling Out Nationally with Strategic Targeting: Prioritised schools with low female participation and communities with fewer sports opportunities and provided equipment packs to each school to support long‑term engagement.
• Youth‑Friendly Promotion & Engagement: Captured videos, photos, and social media content during pilot phases to promote the programme and encouraged participants to lead creative engagement through playlists and content creation.