The University of Toronto Varsity Blues badminton team secured their spot in the national gold medal match after delivering a perfect 4-0 record on the opening day of competition at the 2025 YONEX Canadian University College Championships, hosted by Université Laval.

U of T began their journey back to the championship final with back-to-back 5-0 victories on Friday (Mar. 14) morning, defeating the Montreal Carabins and TMU Bold in their first two round-robin matches. Winning in each of the event categories, the Blues early victories were highlighted by a dominant women's doubles performance from Jackie Dent and Jocelyne Jaw, defeating their Montreal counterparts 21-3, 21-7, while Dent paired with Chloe Choi to earn an equally impressive 21-3, 21-5 win versus TMU.

In their final round-robin match, Toronto was in tough battling UQAM in a back-and-forth series, which U of T eventually came out on top of with a 3-2 victory. After a women's singles win from Jaw and another women's doubles win for Dent and teammate Joanna Xu, the deciding match in the series proved to be in mixed doubles. After dropping the first match 21-18, the U of T duo of Choi and Edward Zhang bounced back, grabbing the series win with scores of 21-13, 21-14 in the best-of-three contest. Securing an undefeated round-robin, the Blues earned a bye to the national semifinal later in the day.

To close out Friday, Toronto matched up with fellow OUA club Western, who knocked off the York Lions 3-1 in the quarter-finals to reach the Final Four themselves. U of T made quick work of the Mustangs, winning 3-0, securing the victory before the start of the mixed doubles contest. Once again Dent and Xu teamed for a quick women's doubles win, while Harold Tan secured a men's singles match with scores of 21-18, 21-17.

In a rematch of last year's national gold medal match and this year's OUA championship final, the Blues will once again challenge the Waterloo Warriors for the top step of the podium. U of T defeated Waterloo 7-1 in the provincial championship in early February, while the Warriors came out on top on the national stage last March with a 3-1 victory of their own.

The national gold medal match is scheduled for 8:30 a.m. on Saturday (Mar. 15) morning.

Following the team portion of the championships, the individual championships will continue into Sunday (Mar. 16), providing another opportunity for athletes to represent their school and clubs for individual event titles.