A New Sport?

A New Sport?

Jasmin Ladher, Staff Reporter

Many of you are familiar with the sport badminton, but how many of you would like to play it as a competitive sport?

I know that badminton is a pretty simple sport and for a person like me who is not the most athletic person ever, it’s super fun. For all the people who want to do something active or join a sport but don’t really enjoy running or sweating a lot, this is the perfect sport.

To play badminton you need a racket and a shuttlecock (most famously known as a birdie). The objective of the game is to get it over the net and into the designated areas without it touching the ground on your side. You can play singles or doubles which is like 1vs1 or 2 vs 2. You are required to win 21 points to win a set with most matches being best of 3 sets. but if the scores are tied at 20-20 then it comes down to whichever player manages to get two clear points ahead. To begin the game, the first player must serve diagonally over the net and can only be hit underarm below the waist. Points can be gained by successfully hitting over the net and into the other opponent’s court before they hit it or if the opponent hits the birdie on the net or outside the court.

Personally, I’ve always wanted to play a sport and tried a bunch of sports but couldn’t find one that fit me. When my sister took me to play badminton with her badminton team, I immediately knew that this is the sport I wanted to play. When I started my first year at West High, I asked around if there was a badminton team and was totally disappointed when there wasn’t. That’s when a friend told me to just create a badminton team. I figured this would be a great story to help spread the word if anyone wants to help make a badminton team.

I asked Coach Casey Wichman, an Athletic Director, what the process of adding badminton was and he said “The process of creating a badminton team consists of finding coaches and players as well as reaching out to schools in our league to determine If we could play in the Tri City Athletic League like we do in all other sports. If schools in our league do not have a team, we would have to be independent and reach out to schools to create our schedule every year. On top of this, we would need to purchase uniforms, schedule officials, and make sure that civic permits are put in for the use of facilities for practice and games. Depending on how many students we got to sign up we would then need to determine how many levels we would have (Freshman, Junior Varsity and Varsity) and for Male and Female.”

I spoke to some students and Freshman Gabriella Benitez, one who already plays water polo said “I do enjoy playing it, and I bet other students do too. Most of us played it in middle school and it was really fun.” I spoke to other freshmen and most of them said that they were interested in playing since it is a “calmer sport.”

I also spoke to freshman Julia Garceta and asked them what their opinions were on badminton and their answer was “If badminton was a sport here at West High, I would definitely play.”

There were many students unaware of badminton even being a sport and didn’t want to join because they thought there was a lot of running and sweating but after learning about it, most said that they would love to join.

Overall, I think it’s just a great sport, and I had a fun time playing it and I think it would be good for students to get active while doing things they enjoy. It isn’t a sport yet but if enough students want to play it, it could be a competitive sport here at West High.

Photo credits: https://www.dimensions.com/element/badminton-smash