On Mar. 1, the AHS badminton team traveled to Northern California (NorCal) for a tournament against schools in the area, becoming the first high school badminton team in California to ever do this.

The team left on the morning of Friday, Mar. 1 and traveled up to Mission San Jose for its first match against Mission San Jose High School. After a close battle, AHS took the game winning 8-7. On Saturday, the players then played at Independence High School (IHS) in a tournament against IHS and Gunn High School (GHS). Against both IHS and GHS, Varsity Badminton won with astounding scores of 14-1 and 12-3, respectively. After such successful and victorious games, the team headed back home on Sunday to prepare for its next match against Wilson High School.

Coach Derrick Ng expressed, “There are a lot of positive feelings I have towards our upcoming trip. When I started coaching here at Arcadia high, I never imagined that the team would travel outside of the LA region, let alone during our fourth year as a team. Traveling outside LA as a four year old team makes me feel that us coaches must be doing something right.” He added, “Overall, I feel excited and optismistic for what’s to come.” Coach James Wang also showed similar thoughts. Coach Wang said, “I’m excited the team is able to drive up to San Jose together.”

The players and coaches have also set expectations for themselves for this trip, one of which is team bonding. Coach Wang stated, “Team bonding is a goal as well. I want everyone to become more fond of each other rather than separate in cliques so that practice and games become more fulfilling and productive.” On the technical side, coaches hope for players to snag some wins and put out their best effort against the NorCal teams. Coach Derrick revealed, “I expect the team to put forth the effort regardless who their individual opponents are and play to the best of their ability. The Northern California badminton scene is exemplary in terms of skill. And given this, I expect us to put up a good fight and see some high level matches.” Coach Wang added, “Hopefully, they can learn from their games and utilize some ideas they learned in NorCal in their future games.”

The trip is just around the corner, so we all wish the best for Varsity Badminton!

Photo by KEVIN YOO