This past Saturday, UC San Diego Badminton competed in its first official league match of the season. San Diego traveled up to UCLA to compete against UC Davis, in addition to UC Riverside and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo (SLO) in a mini regular season tournament involving six other schools. A full day of matches started with a good competitive atmosphere and reunions for many people in this many-school mash-up.

In UC San Diego’s matches against UC Davis, San Diego fielded a strong lineup in men’s singles.  We were able to best our Davis competitors without dropping a single game!  Davis fielded their own strong lineup in both men’s doubles and women’s singles, winning the majority of matches in each of those events.  San Diego’s women’s doubles and mixed doubles teams were able to stay strong and ultimately beat out Davis for the win in both events, giving San Diego the final victory over Davis: 9-6.

Against SLO, San Diego was able to win in all five events, with only a single loss in men’s doubles and mixed doubles.  This led to a commanding win by UC San Diego with a final tally of 12-2.  The final competitor, UCR, similarly was overtaken by the strength of the San Diego lineup ultimately resulting in perfects sweeps of men’s singles, women’s singles, and women’s doubles. The final tally against UCR was 11-1.

This weekend of matches was an absolutely fantastic way for UC San Diego Badminton to start off the year!  We ended the day with wins against every school, and the highest point total of all schools present that day.  Some players in particular had excellent days including: Ali Viettry who ended the day without dropping a single game in both mixed doubles and men’s singles, Brittany Tang who ended the day without dropping a single game in both women’s doubles and mixed doubles, and Lawrence Leung who ended the day with a fantastic score ratio of 2:1 in his men’s singles matches.  It was great to be able to see so many schools, and have such success in playing them at this tourney.  Special thanks to UCLA for hosting this event, and to Davis and for making the long trek down.  Let’s keep winning Tritons!