This past weekend, UC San Diego’s badminton players traveled to UCLA for a league match. Originally, UC San Diego was also supposed to have matches against Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and CSU San Bernardino as well, but due to unforeseen circumstances, they were unable to attend and had to reschedule.

This year, the men’s side was missing many of our top players, so many young players had to step up and fill in their spots. While they tried their hardest, unfortunately UCLA’s newer players proved to be very formidable. Some notable games include Men’s Doubles #2, with Kenneth Hui and Captain Lawrence Guintu taking on UCLA’s Albert Li and Michael Xiong. They played a very close and match-deciding game, but were unable to clinch a victory, losing 14-21, 22-20, 15-21.

On the other hand, the girls nearly swept all of their matches winning 5 out of their 6 events. Honorable mention to new player Misaki Mori, an exchange student from Japan studying here for her final year. She easily defeated her UCLA opponents with scores of 21-13, 21-9 vs Joanna Hao in singles and 21-9, 21-16 in doubles along with fellow teammate Bianca Wibisono. Bianca also posted another win for UCSD in the Mixed Doubles #3 match with freshman Justin Yur with a score of 21-17, 21-14 against UCLA’s Yicheng Wang and Evelyn Molina.

While our players fought hard and tried their best, the Tritons fell to UCLA with a final score of 6-9. However, the state of our team looks promising, as many young players were able to show that they can hold their own against some of the top players in Southern California.