This past Wednesday, January 11th, UC San Diego hosted its first scrimmage of the year against the badminton team of University of California, Berkeley. This annual scrimmage match occurs when Berkeley students are still on holiday, allowing them to come down to southern California and play against various schools. In scrimmages and in intercollegiate competitive matches, the top three places in each event from each school, play against each other determining the overall outcome of the tournament. Despite some team injuries, Berkeley was able to bring down a full squad and both schools enjoyed competitive exciting matches.
UC San Diego fielded a strong lineup against Berkeley’s team in men’s singles where UC San Diego’s own Martin Hung, Ali Viettry, and Leo Zhong were all able to come away with a win against their Berkeley competitors. Berkeley, not to be shown up, won both first and second seed matches in the men’s doubles event. In both women’s singles, and women’s double UC San Diego was able to win the majority of matches. Our top women’s doubles team of Thu Le and Dora Trieu beat out their Berkeley counter-parts in a close match for the UC San Diego win and Captain Brittany Tang and Amanda Lee completely dominated their match with a decisive two game win.
Our final event of mixed doubles also saw UC San Diego coming away with a majority win to put the final tally of the night at 10-5 in favor of the Tritons! It was a great way to start the year for UC San Diego badminton with a win, and an absolute pleasure to host Berkeley who came quite the distance for our scrimmage. Here’s to more Triton victories in the season to come!
