Badminton once again victorious

As the badminton team wraps up the season and heads into PALS and CCS, its members reflect on their remarkably successful season.

“They had an outstanding season,” said coach Linda Brown about the Aragon badminton team’s undefeated 2011 season. “I think it’s the best season we’ve had in ten years,” says senior player Justin Mao.

“We started off the season with our toughest match,” said Brown about their first match of the year against Carlmont High School. “You could say that was the highlight of the year because it went down to our very last match. We were tied 7-7, so whoever won that match basically started off the season really strong.”

Players agree that Carlmont was one of the team’s most difficult opponents, along with Menlo-Atherton. Junior Alyssa Lim says the Menlo-Atherton may have been toughest because they “had more sportsmanship [oriented] people, and Carlmont [just had] players.”

There have been changes to the team since last year, however, which may have helped them to be successful. “We’ve gotten stronger this year,” says Brown. “We’re a deeper team. This year, our team has strong four and five spots. Last year, we weren’t that strong.” Players on the team are ranked and placed from one to five based on skill, one being the best.

Mao says, “I think our seniors have really stepped up this year,” but points out that the team had “pretty strong underclassmen.” However, Brown says, “The problem with freshmen is that we’ve got a lot of strong sophomores, so there’s a lot of competition going on. Although the freshmen are strong and they’ve stepped up, there’s just no place for them to play.”

Focus also might have helped the team this year, according to senior Yi Lu, who says, “Ms. Brown worked with all of us a lot, like, on technique, and that really helped.”

But, the season isn’t over quite yet. The team is scheduled to begin PALS on May 16, where only the top two players in each division will attend. Fellow juniors and partners Alyssa Lim and Kevin Toy, who will both attend, agree that it will be a challenge because they will have to play Carlmont and M.A. again. But, Toy is confident. “We’ll be fine though, we’ll advance to the next round probably,” he says.

Brown is not totally convinced. “PALS is a totally different animal because it’s all ones and twos, so a lot of it depends on scene. We have a lot of potential to do well, but you never know until people show up,” she says.

One of her concerns is how physically draining a day of PALS can be for players. “They have to step up their condition a little bit because, if a team loses on the first day of PALS, they could end up playing five or six games that first day. So, they’ve got be in condition to be able to handle the exhaustion they’re going to have to deal with if that happens.”

Despite any concerns having to do with PALS, the team and their coach are overjoyed with their success this season. Lim says, “Our team is more like a family than a sports team. We support each other more than train each other.” Brown is proud of her team. She says, “They had an outstanding season. They were undefeated, and in badminton that’s really hard because there’s a couple of difficult schools out there.”