Around this time of the school year our school board starts with badminton teams and hosts an area tournament in May. Badminton is probably the sport I enjoy playing the most so here’s my experience so far with my school’s team.
My school held our team’s tryouts around a week and a half ago. The tournament our board hosts only does doubles so the team takes seven boys and girls each to form two pairs of girls, mixed, and boys and two backup players. So in total the team only takes 14 people. The school held two different tryouts on different days and there were a lot of people. Unlike last year where they had you rally in doubles, this year the tryouts they had you play half court against one other person. I feel like this was a better way to do things since you didn’t have to worry about rotations or getting a partner that takes all of your shots.
The tryouts went pretty smoothly and the coaches announced the teams pretty fast. Pretty much all my friends who play badminton got onto the team. I know all of the guys on the team, and they all know the sport and played before. However, almost all of the people on the girls’ side seem to have very little experience and makes me think that there weren’t many good female players at the tryouts. My friend who has lots of experience playing volleyball also used to play a lot of badminton says that this years’ team isn’t looking too good.
We had our first few “practices” were mostly just rallying and going over the rules. The only real exercises we did was practicing our defense against the wall. What seemed strange to me though is that the coaches told to try and use the forearm strokes against the wall even though when you’re defending you typically use backhand for returning powerful attacks.
Overall, I don’t think our team will do very well in the tournament especially since it’s soon and we still don’t know who our partners are. Despite that, I will try to focus on getting better and have fun.