No more than in badminton – table tennis maybe – does the speed of hand-eye coordination rule.

Face-to-face at the net, with a flick of the wrist, the shuttlecock can clear the net and dip in front of your nose in an instant, or perhaps soar crossways to the other side of the court. Nobody knows, nobody but your opponent.

The Yukon's Emily Knickle's strength is in her drop shot, feathering it ever so softly.

She already knows her clearing game, sending the birdie and her challenger to the back of the court, needs work.

And she plans on doing just that in preparation for the 2014 Arctic Winter Games in Fairbanks

For now, Knickle and her partner Shermaine Chua are headed to the semi-final round Friday in the juvenile womens' doubles at the badminton venue hosted by Porter Creek Secondary School.

"There's always room to get better but playing in a tournament like this is a lot of fun,” says the 15-year-old Grade 10 student from Vanier Catholic Secondary School. "I played in the Yukon Championship last March, and from there I had an opportunity to play in the Westerns, and then I got interested in the Arctics.”

Yukon coach Ken Frankish knows badminton, right back to the days when he was a high school student at F.H. Collins in the 1970s. His first Arctic Winters Games as a competitor was in 1980. His last, 1996.

These 22nd Games are his ninth as a competitor or coach.

Badminton is a game of agility, speed and cunning, said Frankish in an interview courtside Wednesday afternoon as his players warmed up for their matches against the Northwest Territories.

He said each of the disciplines, single, doubles and mixed doubles, has its own challenges.

"In mixed doubles, if you have strong team in general, you usually have a woman that controls the net, and whoever controls the net, controls the match,” he said.

"But the game is fluid. Everything is changing all the time. It's fast.”

Frankish said they say a top badminton player will burn through as much energy in a 40 minute match that a tennis player will in a three-hour match.

Team Yukon's ulu hopes lie with Knickles and Chua, Mustafa Syed in juvenile men's singles, Syed and Peter Jensen in doubles, and Afzal Djearam and Casey Parker in junior men's doubles.

Tomorrow's semi-finals sort out who moves onto the ulu medal round Saturday.

Today schedule is solely for mixed doubles.

Cruising down the score sheets of round-robin play so far, one gets the sense that badminton is to Greenland what hockey is to Canada.

In category after category, the Greenland results stand out.

Greenland is, as one official points out while marking the boards, related to Denmark, and badminton is huge in Denmark.

It's huge at Porter Creek Secondary right now, at least in the heart of 18-year-old Djearam.

Last year's graduate of Vanier returned home to Whitehorse a couple of weeks during reading week for the University of Calgary where he's studying biological sciences.

He returned to school, and now he's back to compete, arriving Sunday night on the late flight to participate in his first Arctic Winter Games.

"This is a really great experience,” said Djearam, with his mom and dad seated in the stands to watch his play.

"It's going good so far, it's really going good.”

Singles, doubles? Djearam doesn't really have a preference.

"I like them both equally,” he said. "They are quite different from each other, and they are both fun, competitive.

"Singles is a lot about knowing the court and where to place and doubles is about quick movement, staying focussed and knowing your partner.”

As the shuttlecock streaks across the four courts, intensity rules.

But not so rigid is the atmosphere that everybody doesn't have time to sing happy birthday to Yukon co-coach Abbie Rottondi, who turned 19 yesterday.

A medalist in badminton at the two previous Arctic Winter Games in Grand Prairie and Yellowknife, the born-and-raised Watson Laker would have been eligible for these Games, but for an injury.

"This is the best next thing,” she said of her new role.