About Our Story

How It Started

Shuttle Swingers was founded in October 2019 after they discovered that the LGBTIQ badminton clubs that existed in Sydney, were primarily dominated by male players. There was no dedicated women's LGBTIQ badminton club where lesbians and queer women could play with each other, so Shuttle Swingers was born.

In the first 6 months of establishing itself, Shuttle Swingers grew its member base quite quickly. We held regular badminton socials in Tempe, ran a fundraising event to raise funds for the Bushfire relief appeal in January 2020, put in place a foundation membership program and then made our debut into the LGBTIQ sporting community by having a Fair Day stall and marching under Team Sydney in the 2020 Mardi Gras Parade.

Who We Are Today

We're proud as punch to have become one of Australia's leading women's LGBTIQ+ badminton clubs.

Our programs and events range from weekly socials to training and coaching sessions, off court social events, social competitions and special tournaments. We have a unique ability to cater for players who have only discovered the sport, right through to tournament level competitors. Whatever your level of play, identity or background, our approach is to welcome everyone into our badminton community.

What Makes Us So Special

Some players think it's the colour nature of our club, but in truth it's the empowering community we've created, and the way in which we embrace and respect our people.

We have become an important voice in the world of women's badminton and the queer women's sporting communities. We will continue to strive for equality, recognition and acceptance in places it may not exist, and we will continue to provide a safe and inclusive community that our players can belong to.

Our Mission

Our diverse community of queer women has been strengthened by the inclusion of our allies and fellow LGBTIQ sporting communities.

Shuttle Swingers is committed to meaningful inclusion, diversity and access.

The club aims to create a safe space for LGBTQIA+ women to learn, play and compete in the sport of badminton and to enjoy the social, recreational and health benefits of a supportive community. This includes women of colour, women with disabilities, trans, gender diverse, intersex women and all ally women.

Safety and inclusion are central to our mission and we expect all our members to welcome, with openness and thoughtfulness to other people’s journey, knowledge, experience and identity. We encourage expressions of gender as people’s personal identity and will respect all gender and pronoun identities. In the case where we are unsure of someone’s pronouns, we will use their name.

We will be considerate when describing people’s bodies or genders and will not assume that physical characteristic, defined in terms of binary, medically-defined sex, indicate gender.

Our club is founded on kindness and inclusivity so we have a zero-tolerance policy to homophobic, transphobic, biphobic, racist, ableist and misogynist language and attitudes. We do not tolerate bullying of any kind, swearing, offensive language or degrading comments on topics such as race, culture age, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender and gender identities.