Paul Knechtel (1944-present) has been successful as a player but his real
contribution has been popularizing Badminton.
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Stan Bischof.
Paul Knechtel was born in Toronto, Canada, the middle child of three sons. He was an average student, sports keen, but always a “little guy” who played hockey and basketball in high school. He wasn’t a basketball star but was fortunate to be on the Junior Varsity Team when they won the Toronto Championship in 1960-61. He graduated from the University of Toronto with a Business degree, and McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, with an MBA.
Paul was introduced to badminton when he was 27 in the Canadian Arctic by Jose Kusugak, a residential school survivor. In later life, Jose became one of the founding fathers of the Inuit-controlled Nunavut Territory in the Canadian Arctic, and he was honored with his picture on a Canadian postage stamp. Paul is a Certified Level 1 Coach in Canada, and a very successful national competitor in his age group in both Canada and the U.S. He holds 9 titles in U.S. Senior Nationals Men’s Singles and Men’s Doubles in the 50+, 55+, 60+, and 65+ age groups, and 3 titles in the U.S. Senior International MS and MD in the 45+, 65+, and 70+ age groups. He also won the 2023 Canadian Masters National Championships 75+ XD title.
Paul moved to the U.S. in 1991 to open a U.S. office for a Canadian technology company, and brought his badminton passion with him. He would make regular forays into schools to give clinics and demonstrations. On one of those trips he met Lisa Ward who had established a badminton program in her middle school, a part of her P.E. classes, and then a highly popular after-school club.
Paul coached club teams at both Duke and North Carolina State University for about ten years. He was the founder of former badminton clubs, Badminton RTP and the North Carolina Badminton Club. He was also the co-founder of Badminton North Carolina, a dedicated for-profit facility in the Raleigh-Durham, NC, area. In 2004, Paul created Beyond the Classroom as a non-profit to facilitate educational programs by bringing guest speakers into classrooms. Those guest speakers and athletes included retired Olympian Kevin Han, and 2005 World Champions Howard Bach (also 3-time Olympian) and Tony Gunawan. This program led Paul to use his badminton passion to channel his efforts into Badminton Goes Viral in 2017 with Lisa. They created a pilot program to develop school badminton in Alaska. There are about 30,000 students in Alaska who have been introduced to badminton.
Paul’s favorite saying for his Badminton Goes Viral project is borrowed from the “Field of Dreams” baseball movie: "If you build it, they will come;" . . . and they did, and they continue.
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