Aurora to host Badminton Junior National Chammpionships

Aurora will play host to USA Badminton's 2018 YONEX Junior National Championships.

USAB will partner with the Aurora Area Convention and Visitors Bureau and the Aurora Area Sports Alliance for the event, which will take place at the Great Lakes Volleyball Center, 579 N. Oakhurst Drive.

Next year marks the first time the event - which will be played June 26 to July 3 - will take place in the Midwest in more than 20 years. It marks only the second time the tournament has moved away from the West Coast in the last seven years.

In 2015, Orlando, Florida, served as the host location, while sites in California were selected in 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2017. Bellevue, Washington, was the other West Coast location in 2016.

The Junior National Championships annually field more than 350 participants from across the United States and is USAB's highest-ranking junior tournament.

It carries the heaviest weight for those elite junior players who wish to qualify for Junior International Trials to have a chance to be selected as part of the U.S. Junior Team to compete at the Junior Pan Am Championships and World Junior Championships.

In the past few years, the Aurora area has played host to the United States Specialty Sports Association Fastpitch Girls 18U and 14U National Championships; 2017 NCAA Division I Men's and Women's Golf Championships; Professional Bowlers Association Xtra Frame Parkside Open; the 2017 National Latino Amateur Boxing Association National Championships; the country's largest Ultimate competition - the 2017 Neuqua Valley Knockout; and the largest high school soccer series tournament in the country, the PepsiCo Showdown Soccer Series.

The Great Lakes Volleyball Center is a 60,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art facility that was built in 2003. It features eight volleyball courts that sit atop three layers of plywood and 36,000 pieces of rubber to provide one of the softest playing surfaces available in the world.