Women's Match at Bryn Mawr College

Fun Facts about Bryn Mawr:

1. It is one of the Seven Sister colleges

2. It's colors are yellow and white

3. Hillary Clinton, Emily Dickinson and Audry Hepburn are alumni

4. They were defeated by the Drexel Badminton ladies' team

Final score:  Drexel - 5     Bryn Mawr - 4

Way to go!

BEN

Le Champions

Le Badminton Tournament was a success! Good job to everyone involved in the planning, set-up and execution of the tournament. Shout out to Peter's aunt for providing us with extra nets.

Without further delay, I would like to present you with the results from the championship.

Singles: 1st Place: Yehan Ranasinghe

2nd Place: Chern Lim

Finalists: Peter Thai and Devin Dobrowolski

Doubles: 1st Place: Yehan Ranasinghe and Chern Lim

2nd Place: Devin Dobrowolski and Akhil Kapoor

Congratulations to all!

BEN

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

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

PA State Open 2009 Results

A little behind on my posts, but, as always, it’s worth the wait.

Who am I kidding…

Your Drexel Badminton team traveled to Reading, PA on Saturday, March 7th, 2009 for the 2009 PA State Open. It’s hosted by John Lim of Albright College, brother of our club’s academic advisor, Dr. Teck-Kah Lim.

This year, Drexel made a definitive statement by taking home the Collegiate Team trophy. With a 23-point margin over 2^nd place Swarthmore College, Drexel was declared the 2009 PA State Open’s Collegiate Team Champion.

Here are some Drexel team highlights:

• Yehan Ranasinghe – Division A – Men’s Singles – Runner-up
• Chern-Hooi Lim & Yehan Ranasinghe – Division A – Men’s Doubles – Champions
• Anna Luong & An Nguyen – Division A – Women’s Doubles – Runners-up
• Chern-Hooi Lim – Division B – Men’s Singles – Champion
• Zdravko Tyankov – Division C – Mixed Doubles – Runner-up
• Vincent Kan – Division C – Men’s Singles – Runner-up

Photos are uploaded here for your gleeful viewing pleasure.

We will be back next year to defend our title and we look forward to tougher competition next year from our fellow Pennsylvanian colleges and universities.

-VK

Collegiate Nationals: The Verdict

Aaand we're back.

This will be a quickie. Drexel Badminton placed 5th at the 2009 Badminton Collegiate Nationals tournament.

Oh, and some kid named Yehan won the Men's Singles event. He's pretty good at badminton.

The burger king.

More to come later.

-VK

Quad-meet with Bryn Mawr, UPenn, and NYU

Hello, friends.

Since the number of courts at Drexel is pitiful, we met at Bryn Mawr College on Saturday, February 28th, 2009 to conduct an IBA quad-meet. Drexel played against New York University's badminton team. They had legitimate jerseys. Serious business.

I don't have the results of our individual matches.
Just know this: Drexel defeated NYU 5-4.

We are the IBA champions of the east coast, supposedly.

Some photos are here. Bui Wonder bogarted my camera and took some of the shots toward the latter half of the day. Pz.

-VK

Mid-Atlantic Classic 2009 Results

I LIKE SUSHI.

What? Another one-post week? You ought to cut this guy's salary. That is, if he got paid for doing this. But no, he doesn't.

We were at Bryn Mawr College for Mid-Atlantic Classic 2009 from February 13th-15th, 2009. Somehow, we always seem to find our way back to the Main Line time and time again. Tournament results are here.

Drexel Badminton highlights:

• Zdravko Tyankov - Men's Singles - B Level Quarterfinalist
• Peter Thai - Men's Singles - B Level Quarterfinalist
  
  
• Chern-Hooi Lim and Yehan Ranasinghe - Men's Doubles - A Level Quarterfinalists
• Chunyin Li and Henrik Lam - Men's Doubles - B Level Quarterfinalists
• Zdravko Tyankov and Peter Thai - Men's Doubles - B Level Consolation Quarterfinalists
• Anna Luong and An Nguyen - Women's Doubles - A Level Consolation Quarterfinalists
  
  
• Ta Lin - Mixed Doubles - B Level Consolation Quarterfinalist
• Peter Thai and Xiang Mao - Mixed Doubles - B Level Consolation Semifinalists

Photos from me are scarce. Peter Teuben's gallery is much meatier.

This tournament was a bit of a wake-up call for Drexel Badminton. We could've done better. Much better.

Change is a-brewin'. I can feel it. In fact, if I may borrow from Phil Collins, I can feel it coming in the air tonight.

You just wait and see.

-VK

Results of IBA Matches against UPenn

One post a week is pretty good, innit? No? Well, I'm trying.

The Drexel Badminton team squared off against UPenn for friendly IBA matches last week. We hosted UPenn's women's team on Wednesday, February 4th, 2009 at the DAC. Thursday, February 5th, 2009 saw the men's team at Hutchinson Gym on UPenn's campus.

Anna convincingly faked a career-ending leg injury while Yehan, a newly-joined team member fresh from Sri Lanka, dominated his matches with aplomb.

The results:
Drexel vs. UPenn [Women's]: 4-5
Drexel vs. UPenn [Men's]: 5-4
Drexel vs. UPenn [Mixed]: 3-2

Too close for comfort, but Drexel edged out to become the winner of this exciting bout. Well played, all.

Edit: Here's a straight copy/paste job from Mindy Lee of UPenn with the results of each match. If you have any problems with it, I don't wanna hear it. Thanks.

Mixed Team results: Drexel def. Penn 3-2
Men's doubles: Chad/Jason lost to Chern/Yehan 16-21, 16-21
W Doubles: Devi/Mindy def. An/Anna 19-21, 21-19, 21-14
M Singles: Sanket lost to Yehan 13-21, 14-21
W Singles: Devi def. An 21-12, 19-21, 21-12
Jimmy Lin/Devi lost to Chern/An 15-21, 16-21

Men's team results: Drexel def Penn 5-4
Doubles
1 Chad/Jason lost to Chern/Yehan 16-21, 16-21
2 Jimmy Lin/Sanket def. Zdravko/Peter 21-17, 20-22, 21-14
3 Jimmy Ma/Swee def. Vincent/Arthur 18-21, 24-22, 21-15

Singles
1 Sanket lost to Yehan 13-21, 14-21
2 Jimmy Lin lost to Cher 16-21, 9-21
3 Jason T def Zdravko 21-15, 21-13
4 Chad def Peter 21-19, 21-19
5 Swee lost to Vincent 21-11, 17-21, 19-21
6 Jimmy Ma lost to Linh 21-15, 18-21, 16-21

UPenn Women def. Drexel Women 5-4
Doubles
1 Devi/Mindy def. An/Anna 19-21, 21-19, 21-14
2 Yue/Jennifer lost to Xiang/Jackie 5-21, 21-23
3 Angela/Michelle lost to Sara/Yung 21-14, 22-24, 14-21

Singles
1 Devi def An 21-12, 19-21, 21-12
2 Yue lost to Xiang 11-21, 11-21
3 Mindy def Anna 21-9, 21-12
4 Jennifer def Jackie 21-15, 21-14
5 Angela lost to Sara 17-21, 17-21
6 Michelle def Yung 21-11, 21-11

-VK

Mainline Doubles 2009 Results

Here's the deal. I don't actually know the results.

But I have photos up and that's as good of an excuse as ever to make a post about them.

I am rather fond of the 35mm f/2 now, of which this set was predominantly shot with. Let me know your favorites.

-VK

DC Open 2009 Results

Hoo boy. Another year, another DC Open.

The Drexel Badminton Team was at the University of Maryland once again for DC Open 2009 from January 9-11, 2009. The tournament ran like a well-oiled machine and competition was enjoyably intense.

We stayed at the Clarion Inn where bed bugs were kept to a minimum this time around. 70 bones a night for a double room with free breakfast but the free WiFi was inexplicably down.

The tournament results are here. Drexel Badminton highlights:

• Chern-Hooi Lim - Men's Singles - B Level Semifinalist
• Xiang Mao - Women's Singles - A Level Quarterfinalist
• Anna Luong - Women's Singles - B Level Semifinalist
• An Nguyen - Women's Singles - B Level Finalist
  
  
• Peter Thai & Zdravko Tyankov - Men's Doubles - B Level Quarterfinalists
• Henrik Lam & Chern-Hooi Lim - Men's Doubles - B Level Quarterfinalists
• Anna Luong & An Nguyen - Women's Doubles - B Level Semifinalists
• Xiang Mao - Women's Doubles - B Level Finalists
• Chern-Hooi Lim & An Nguyen - Mixed Doubles - B Level Quarterfinalists
  
  
• Peter Thai - Men's Singles - C Level Quarterfinalist
• Vincent Kan - Men's Singles - D Level Semifinalist
• Sara White - Women's Singles - D Level Quarterfinalist
  
  
• Vincent Kan & Chunyin Li - Men's Doubles - D Level Quarterfinalists
• Linh Thanh Bui & Artur Vieira - Men's Doubles - D Level Quarterfinalists
• Sara White - Women's Doubles - D Level Semifinalists

Congratulations to our noted Drexel players and to all participants as well.
Peter Teuben, tournament coordinator, has his photos here.
My photos, centered mainly around Drexel, of course, are here.

Looking forward to next year's DC Open.

-VK

Mid-Atlantic Juniors 2008 Results

A day late, a dollar short? Or perhaps, a month and a half late.

Nevertheless, here is how the Drexel Badminton team fared at Mid-Atlantic Juniors 2008 held at Bryn Mawr College on December 12-13, 2008.

• Chern-Hooi Lim - Men's Singles Champion
• Ta Lin - Mixed Doubles Consolation Champion
• Anna Luong - Women's Singles Consolation Finalist
• Zdravko Tyankov - Mixed Doubles Consolation Finalist
• Zdravko Tyankov & Chern-Hooi Lim - Men's Doubles Finalists

Well done to all participants. Photos are here.

-VK

Results of IBA Matches against Princeton and Columbia - 12/06/2008

I take my sweet time updating this blag.

Drexel vs. Princeton (winners in bold)
Men's (7-2)
Chern & Henrik vs. Chern & Richard: 21-16, 21-13
Zdravko & Ta vs. Teck & Jason: 10-21, 24-22, 18-21
Chun & Vince vs. Jason & Iggor: 21-??, 21-??
Henrik vs. Chern Han: 15-21, 21-16, 14-21
Chern Lim vs. Richard: 21-12, 16-21, 21-28
Zdravko vs. Teck: 21-19, 21-20
Linh vs. Shu: 24-22, 21-14
Vince vs. Ahand: 21-16, 21-13
Ta vs. Karthik: 21-20, 21-10

Women's (1-8)
An & Anna vs. Shelley & Hui Wen: 14-21, 12-21
Jackie & Sara vs. Lova & Lila: 21-18, 15-21, 21-14
Marianne & Tze-Yee vs. Nicole & Ala: 8-21, 17-21
An vs. Shelley: 10-21, 10-21
Anna vs. Hui Wen: 10-21, 9-21
Jackie vs. Lova: 15-21, 22-24
Sara vs. Lila: 19-21, 20-22
Marianne vs. Nicole: 8-21, 10-21
Tze-Yee vs. Angela: 7-21, 10-21

Mixed (1-0)
Chern & An vs. ?? & ??: ??


Drexel vs. Columbia (winners in bold)
Men's (7-2)
Chern & Zdravko vs. ?? & ??: 21-3, 21-19
Joe & Artur vs. ?? & ??: 15-21, 14-21
Linh & Artur vs. ?? & ??: Default
Henrik vs. ??: 19-21, 21-18, 24-22
Chern vs. ??: 21-12, 21-13
Zdravko vs. ??: 15-21, 21-13, 21-15
Aaron vs. ??: 18-21, 13-21
Joe vs. ??: Default
Aaron vs. ??: Default

Women's (3-6)
An & Anna vs. ?? & ??: 14-21, 22-24
Jackie & Sara vs. ?? & ??: 18-21, 17-21
Marianne & Tze-Yee vs. ?? & ??: Default
An vs. ??: 18-21, 19-21
Anna vs. ??: 13-21, 21-17, 18-21
Jackie vs. ??: ??-21, 13-21
Sara vs. ??: 21-14, 16-21, 21-13
Marianne vs. ??: 5-21, 8-21
Tze-Yee vs. ??: Default

Mixed (1-0)
Chern & An vs. ?? & ??: 21-16, 21-17

Photos are here.


-VK