Photo:
Caption: Last year’s San Gabriel Badminton Team’s full foster. This photo was taken on April 8th, 2023 right after an intense game(and victory) against Cerritos High School Badminton Team.
WC: 664
San Gabriel Badminton Team tryouts have recently started and have just completed! However, before we get into the tryout progress, let’s get a recap of Badminton and our very own matador team! Badminton is a racquet sport played using racquets to hit a shuttlecock across a net on a court. The shuttlecock is a feathered, plastic projectile designed for speed. The shuttlecock reaches seventy-seven miles an hour on AVERAGE, and goes over one hundred if played by experienced players. However, the world record for fastest hit in an actual game goes over three-hundred fifty miles per hour! Although it may be played with larger teams, the most common forms of the game are “singles” (in which there is one person on each side of the court) and “doubles” (in which there are two people on each side of the court). Badminton is normally played on a rectangular indoor court or outdoors with a similar/identical design. Indoor courts, like the one our very own school has, are normally made of wood or some type of synthetic material for a smoother surface to prevent injuries or any unfortunate incident. Though badminton courts could be very flexible in size, being able to play anywhere if you have a net and even being able to adjust different sport court’s to your liking (such as a volleyball court), the ideal size is forty-four feet long and twenty feet wide. That’s enough about the sport though, let’s get into our (sort of) reigning badminton team!
The San Gabriel Badminton Team has had its fair share of records, winning 2 medals last year as well as placing third out of several schools in the league. Leimin Wang, a 3-year varsity member of the team, said that the quality and winrate of the team has been on the rise, winning more games than losing in recent years. “The first year I was here, we had a terrible win-loss record. However, last year, we went positive!” When asked about his experience so far on the team, Leimin stated “My experience changes year to year, but it’s getting better. It changes because the number of people in the team changes and more and more people are joining, whether the members are good or bad. Before, we had more exposure to everybody else but less people are getting their hands on experience. ”What do you think your team can improve on? When asked about any constructive criticism for the team, he stated that “I really liked our team size before, when there were 15 Varsity and 15 JV. This year, there were a ton of people. If we could have less people and more underclassmen as well as a more organized system, it would be better.”
This year’s tryouts ended on just October 15, ending a painful process of elimination over the course of 3 different days. On day one, half of the participants were eliminated. On day two, another half was eliminated. On day three, the final members of the team were decided. There were well over 50 kids who showed up to tryouts, all of whom were separated into 6 lines and tested. They were tested on their ability to “clear” (a stroke that sends the shuttle high over the opponent’s head and drops near the backcourt boundary line), “smash” (a hard overhead hit with a fast downward path that gives the opponent less time to return the shuttle), “drop.” (an attacking shot that draws the opponent to the front of the court, making it harder to return the next shot), and other hitting techniques. The past/current members of the team were in each line, “feeding” ( a technique where a player returns the shuttle to another player at a controlled speed) the shuttlecock back to the participants. They looked at consistency and quality, seeing which students had the best form, speed, power, etc. Though the new members have not yet been revealed, Leimin stated that they all looked promising.
