Club shuttles have been ordered

I know. This stinks. We ran out of nylon shuttles for club use a couple weeks ago.

Rest assured, a shipment of Yonex Mavis 350s are coming in next week. Please stay patient. We'll see you at practice.

-VK

Tri-meet with Rutgers and Princeton

Still chugging along on that one-post-per-week train.

This past Saturday, April 18th, 2009, Drexel Badminton headed to Rutgers University up in New Brunswick, NJ for a tri-meet against the host and Princeton University. If I were smart, I would have taken pictures of their beautiful campus, but for now, you'll have to take my word for it. There were students, real live human beings, on campus during the weekend enjoying outdoor activities and having loads of fun. Drexel... dream on.

Anyway, here are the results of our badminton matches:

Men's Team
Drexel vs. Rutgers: 9-0
Drexel vs. Princeton: 9-0

Women's Team
Drexel vs. Rutgers: 6-3
Drexel vs. Princeton: 3-6

Mixed Team
Drexel vs. Rutgers: 3-2

An impressive clean sweep from Drexel's men's team against our competitors. I fell on my goods during my singles match but it was clearly worth it.

Congratulations to Drexel and thank you to Rutgers and Princeton for a fantastic afternoon, especially to Rutgers for hosting us.

-VK

Lee Chong Wei vs. Lin Dan to pass the time

I don't usually play better after watching an intense match, especially not between the top 2 players in the world, but what are you gonna do...

Badminton Freak has the videos for the All England 2009 Men's Singles Finals match uploaded here. An exceedingly entertaining match to watch.

We'll be up in North Jersey this weekend for an IBA tri-meet with Rutgers and Princeton Universities.

-VK

NYC Badminton Club Annual Tournament 2009 Results

New York, New York, Big city of dreams;
And everything in New York ain't always what it seems.

Who would've figured that Drexel Badminton would walk away from the NYC Badminton Club's annual tournament with 10 medals?

Here are two of them.

Held from March 27th - 29th, 2009 at John Bowne High School in Flushing, NY, this was their club's 13th annual tournament. To make things fun, half of the group travelled by car with Nisarg. The other half rode the Chinatown bus up to NYC, hopped on the subway, caught a bus, only to walk a fair amount to the actual gym. I also made the group walk about 3 miles to our hotel in Jamaica, NY, passing through a heavily Jewish neighborhood at roughly 1 in the morning. Good times.

Here are the Drexel Badminton team highlights:

• Yehan Ranasinghe - Division A - Men's Singles - Bronze
  
  
• Peter Thai & Zdravko Tyankov - Division B Consolations - Men's Doubles - Golds
• Xiang Mao & Sara White - Division B Consolations - Women's Doubles - Golds
  
  
• Vincent Kan & Artur Vieira - Division C Consolations - Men's Doubles - Golds
• Chunyin Li & Sara White - Division C Consolations - Mixed Doubles - Golds
• Artur Vieira - Division C Consolations - Mixed Doubles - Bronze

Some photos are here. The lighting was really orange and there wasn't a lot of space to shoot from.

And Yehan won 70 bucks. Cha-ching!

For some Grandmaster Flash lovin'...

-VK

Collegiate Nationals: A Fantastic Voyage

Slide, slide, slippity slide; I do what I do just to survive…

In a bid to stay chronologically relevant, I am posting the details of our trip to the 2009 Badminton Collegiate Nationals a mere 17 days after it ended. That’s only a postponement of 1/26th of a year, or so. That’s such a small fraction, I may well have just stepped off the plane yesterday!

An annual gathering of the nation’s most dedicated badminton players who happen to be undergraduate college students, this year’s tournament was hosted by Irvine Valley College in Irvine, CA from March 20th to 22nd, 2009. Yeah, we went to California to play badminton. Jealous? You should be.

We have risen.

Our journey has us trapped in those giant Pringles cans with wings for about 3 hours at a time. Departing from Philadelphia International Airport (PHL), we have a short layover in Houston, Texas at George Bush Intercontinental Airport (IAH). Well, it was scheduled to last about an hour, but extended to easily double that when our initial plane was found to have been malfunctioning mechanically. How naughty. Appropriately agitated and seated on a new plane, we finally take off for John Wayne Airport (SNA) in Orange County, California.

It’s pretty empty ‘cause it’s pretty late.

With not much time to practice on a Friday night, we grab our rental cars, check into our hotel rooms, and head out to gorge ourselves on Chinese buffet. We would easily burn off those calories the next day when most of the action would take place at Irvine Valley College’s gym. This is what we came here for. Not for the beautiful weather, flash cars, or sandy beaches, though there was plenty of that. No, we were here for domestic-class collegiate badminton.

Saturday arrives and we find ourselves on the courts awaiting our competition. I’m not sure how to write about our badminton matches except that West Coast players are formidable and relentless. Yehan played his Men’s Singles semifinals and finals matches on Sunday with his Drexel crew intensely cheering him on. And our support clearly worked. Yehan Ranasinghe became the 2009 Badminton Collegiate Nationals Men's Singles Champion. Drexel University placed 5th as a team.

Great sportsmanship from both players.

With the hard work over, we had some time to relax and enjoy ourselves at In-N-Out, the beach, Vietnamese restaurants and yogurt bars. Suffice to say, we partied with reckless abandon. (Hey, I don’t know who’s reading this thing.) We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves on the left coast and returned Monday evening to Philadelphia.

California, we’ll miss you.


The trip’s photo album is here.


And just in case you missed the reference to Coolio’s Fantastic Voyage…


-VK

Guide to Badminton Fashion

DO wear light fabric to decrease undesired perspiration.

Proper clothing can enhance athletic ability when you need it most.


DON'T forget to wear socks.
Lin Dan regrets nothing.

This concludes Drexel Badminton's definitive Guide to Badminton Fashion.

-VK

I live vicariously through legitimate badminton players

I must make a confession. I am not a world class badminton player. OK, no one was surprised.

Therefore, I attain satisfaction from watching legitimate badminton players duel it out as the game is meant to be played.

Taufik Hidayat

I will also admit that Taufik Hidayat is one of my favorite players to watch. See his quarter finals match against Peter Gade here at the 2009 All England badminton tournament.

And while we're making confessions anyway, I have a naughty British commentator crush on Gillian Clark. Every word she utters is to be savored. Point after point, jewels to be preserved. If I could have a gender, nationality, and badminton ability change, I would be her.

Gillian Clark

Maybe.

-VK