Following their first win of the season against Sequoia, the Aragon badminton team proceeded with their matchup against Burlingame with a positive attitude en route to their 10-5 win.
Sophomore Geth Wu recognizes how the Panthers’ freshmen additions have helped them become a bigger, more formidable team this season, saying, “To our shock, it was a very close game. Burlingame wasn’t as good last year, but with the freshman this year, they have improved a lot.”
Senior Erwin Sarmiento held his own against his opponent, Burlingame freshman Zoey Zhang, but ended up losing two of his three sets against the freshman.
After the win, Aragon head coach Linda Brown commended the play of their mixed doubles teams, saying, “Our mixed doubles is a very strong group this year and is full of seniors.”
Around the midway part of the contest, the teams were tied up at 6-6, but the Dons were able to emerge victorious with their doubles teams in order to come up with the eventual victory and advance in their season with another tally in the win column.
With their current two-game win streak to start the season, the team is looking to carry over their success last season. The Dons are looking to take revenge on their loss against Mills in the Central Coast Sections (CCS) tournament last season.
With a good amount of experienced seniors, the new additions to the team are able to learn from them and improve their game to help the success of the team.
Brown is pushing the players to train hard and put in the necessary time to prepare themselves for upcoming matches. Especially with new players, Brown hopes to work on their experience in their different playstyles.
“Practices depend on playing singles or doubles,” says Brown.
Singles work on conditioning because of the quick play style. Doubles focuses on strategy to try to control where the birdie goes.” As Brown explains, badminton requires a lot of work from the wrists, and players are required to condition themselves to strengthen their abilities. Brown aims to utilize this strategy against the upcoming opponents in hopes of reaching the top of CCS.
Sophomore Jeremy Liu adds, “We will hit the birdie in places the opponent can’t hit during games. We will focus on skill shot and speed.”
Liu talks about the emphasis on endurance and skill shots in order to get a leg up on other teams.
While the team finished last season satisfied with their overall performance, they also acknowledge that there were definitely some obstacles. The team is primarily eyeing the upcoming matches against Peninsula Athletic League (PAL) Bay division rivals, Carlmont and Mills.
Liu says “We lost to Carlmont, which was a bad game with many mistakes. [Mills and Carlmont] were the two teams that we had to compete with in CCS and they got the better of us.”
Brown also emphasizes the lack of girls on the team as a concern. Thus, Brown has sought to recruit more girls to the junior varsity roster with the future upcoming seasons in mind.
With the season almost underway, the Dons certainly have many strengths to build on, but still have a few things they need to improve on as well. With the many successes of last season, the Dons need to continue to add to their strengths while also improving their weaknesses towards securing one of the top seeds in the CCS tournament.
