Tritons Host Southern California Collegiate Badminton League – Preseason Badminton Tournament
This past Sunday, November 15th, the UC San Diego Badminton Club hosted the league’s Preseason Tournament. There were many breathtaking matches and UC San Diego placed high in most events. Although we did not place first in any events, we managed to have a set of players in the finals for Men’s Doubles and Women’s Singles as well as four other teams in semifinals.
One of the earlier highlight matches involved UC San Diego Men’s Singles player Dian Shi; he was deadlocked in an extremely close match with USC’s player Daniel Chow, who was seeded fourth in the tournament. As the rallies ensued, Shi held his own and pushed Chow to a third game. The score for their matches were 21-19, 12-21, and 16-21 respectively.
In Women’s Singles, we had two-year team member Thu Le sweep through the bracket, where she faced fellow teammate Hortense Le at the semifinal stage eventually tiring out her fellow teammate and taking the win. In the end, however, Thu Le lost to UCI’s infamous Cally Chung and placed second.
In Men’s Singles, our top player and former team captain Chetan Potu faced an early challenge in the second round against USC’s Takeru Hosaka and prevailed with score of 21-12, 21-12. He would later meet his high school teammate and rival Daniel Chow (USC) at the semifinal stage, where they played a back-and-forth match that went three games long. However, Potu was unable to win his singles match.
In Men’s Doubles, our two top doubles players Chetan Potu and Kenneth Hui breezed through their opponents until the semifinal stage, where Potu/Hui met USC’s Daniel Chow and Andrew Kao. This time, Potu got his revenge and UC San Diego came out on top in two straight games. However, Potu and Hui were unable to beat USC’s Jeffrey Kuo and Henry Liu in the finals, and UC San Diego took home second place in Men’s Doubles.
In Women’s Doubles, our top pair Bianca Wibisono and Thu Le made it all the way to semifinals where they would meet Cally Chung and Kimmy Ny from UCI. Although the game was close, eventually Thu Le’s previous exhaustion from other matches took a toll on the game. With a score of 21-17, 15-21, and 21-12 our girls sadly lost.
Last, but certainly not least, our third-ranked pair for mixed doubles surprised everyone by making it all the way to semifinals. Returning player Douglas Pan teamed up with new junior transfer Helen Fu to beat the tournament’s third seeds Austin Lee and Lucy Gao from UCLA. They then met their teammates Albert Nguyen and Cindy Chan in the quarterfinals, where they would play for a spot in the semifinals. Pan and Fu emerged on top after a long and intense match with the score being 16-21, 21-19, 21-16. Unfortunately, Pan and Fu were unable to beat USC’s Andrew Kao and Jacqueline Ko, and took home a third place spot for Mixed Doubles.
Despite the fact that UC San Diego Badminton did not take home gold this year, we still managed to take second in two events and held our own with many teams in semifinals, giving a bright outlook into the season to come.
