A Fast Start for Girls’ Badminton

Stuyvesant’s girls’ badminton team brought home their third win against Martin L. King Jr. High School. They won with a score of 5-0, only losing a set in the first doubles match. In that match, senior Jamie Huang and senior and co-captain Mickey Yu of Stuyvesant faced off against Amie Lin and Hillary Pham. Huang and Yu lost the first set 21-10 but quickly recovered and beat Pham and Lin in the next two sets to win the match.

The other matches were comfortable wins for the team, with every single set going the way of Stuyvesant, leading to 3-0 wins. The singles exhibition match was also a comfortable win for Stuyvesant, with junior Melissa Gao beating Margaret Olko 21-3 in the single set match.

This fast start marks an excellent beginning to this season as the team seeks to replicate last season’s success. The girls finished the season 9-1, with the only defeat being at the hands of Seward Park. The rivalry with Seward Park is going to be important this year, with both Stuyvesant and Seward ending last season with 9-1 records. The loss for both teams came from a game against the other. With Seward off to a good start this year, already 5-0, the rivalry games could be the deciding factors in which team ends up at the top of the standings.

Seward Park beat Stuyvesant 4-1 on Monday, April 9. One of Stuyvesant’s stand-out players was senior Ida Wang, who beat her Seward opponent in all three sets by a comfortable margin. Seward’s Xiahua Liu began well, rallying at the net for a while before eventually beginning to lose points. Each of the sets began with long rallies, but Wang was too consistently good for Liu. Though Liu tried to throw off Wang with a cheeky serve right next to the net, Wang returned it quickly with a clean backhand to win the point.

Though the match ended in a defeat, Coach Hugh Francis was not concerned. He was proud of the way his team played, saying, “Overall, [it was] a loss, but we played them close. We had 15 points or more in every lost set, except for the one where [freshman May Yun Le Phyu] wasn’t feeling well.”

Francis also drew attention to the fact that his team had only been able to play one real game before facing Seward. He hopes that this loss can be used to motivate the team and help them improve, especially since the sets were so close. Seward and Stuyvesant often split their two games, and the team will have an opportunity to show their improvement against Seward in about three weeks’ time.

The loss also did not shake Coach Francis’s confidence about the playoffs. “We handled [Martin L. King Jr. High School] pretty well,” he said. “Usually King is the third best team in the division, and the top three teams usually make the playoffs. We should be optimistic, and we should expect to get to the playoffs.”

Coach Francis’s confidence in his team means that they just have to perform with the same consistency as last year. Even if Seward wins again next game, if all goes according to plan, the team will still comfortably be in a playoff spot.