Last Tuesday, April 29, the Los Altos High School varsity badminton team swept the Kathleen MacDonald High School Condors 22–8 in a senior night rematch.
The evening started with lights off and flashlights on — both the Eagles and Condors gathered in two lines, forming a tunnel for the seniors to run through.
“It was a fun celebration,” Jared said. “I thought the juniors did a really good job with all the decorations, the preparation, and just putting everything together.”
After celebrating, seniors Iris Bao, Jared Chua, Julian Chung, Raymond Liu, Ziana Merchant, Ayumi Terlizzi, and Sandy Xu led Los Altos into their matches. Boys and girls singles dominated, winning all their matches and earning 12 points for the Eagles. Girls singles 1 and 3, boys doubles, and mixed doubles 2 and 3 also won their matches and earned another 10 points for Los Altos.
The Eagles finished this season with an 8–4 league record. At the start of the season, no one expected a solid placement as last year, the team lost 9 games while only winning 3.
“I was unsure how our team would fare this year,” Co-captain Ziana said. “We had a lot of strong players last year that ended up graduating, so I was feeling a little scared.”
“At the beginning, I was 100 percent sure we were going to end up last in the league,” co-captain junior Fiona Yao said.
The team kicked off its season with a rough start — according to Fiona, during the first game of the season against Los Gatos High School, many players were still unfamiliar with the court lines, how to keep scores, or how and when to serve.
“I’m not going to lie, I was worried,” Fiona said. “But then, towards our third game-ish, the players started picking the rules up fast.”
In particular, Fiona noticed that the newer players were eager to learn and would ask many questions.
“They would ask questions like, ‘How can I beat this person?’ or ‘How can I improve against this person next time?’” Fiona said. “And that helped our team come together.”
Additionally, both Ziana and Fiona reported that the team’s chemistry this year was stronger than in past years — a key to the team’s improvement.
“There were many games this year with so much cheering,” Ziana said. “It was so good to see how people bonded and made friendships. I know all the friends that people made through badminton are gonna stick — past badminton, past high school, they’ll be lifelong friends.”
According to Jared, his and many other seniors’ favorite memories with the team was the bonding.
“A very fond memory is when people on the back of the bus coming back from away games would play karaoke on a speaker,” Jared said. “More than that, just practicing every day and saying ‘Hi’ to the same people and playing with them is fun.”
Even though a large part of the varsity team is graduating this year, the captains have confidence in the juniors to lead the team next year.
“I’m not that scared for a team next year because it’s not just the team leaders holding the team together,” Fiona said. “There are a lot of good connections between the players themselves. Many more people were willing to coach during games, and it felt much more balanced.”
“Overall, it was an amazing year, but it was only amazing because of all of the people on the team,” Ziana said. “I’m so proud of the team, and it’s going to be exciting to see how the juniors lead and what the team will do next year.”
