The Varsity Badminton team narrowly defeated Cupertino High School 16-14 in its game on Tuesday, March 22. The Boys Singles players dominated their competition, with sophomore Advait Ramakrishnan, junior Lance Fuchia and junior Maharshi Mandapati all beating their opponents in two sets and securing six points for MVHS. The Girls Singles players also played well, with sophomore and Varsity 1 player Daphne Huang sweeping her opponent in two sets with scores 21-6 and 21-5. 

However, no Boys Doubles or Girls Doubles pairs won their matches, leaving MVHS and CHS tied at 14-14 before the final match, which was Varsity 2 Mixed Doubles. As a pair, junior Andrea Liang and sophomore Maxwell Ou secured the overall win for the team after defeating their competitors in two sets with scores of 22-20 and 21-13. 

Ou attributes the closer score in the first set to a lack of confidence caused by the pressure that he was facing, as he knew that their match would break the tie between the two teams. Unlike Ou, Liang did not know that the result of their match would determine the team’s final result.

“I think I probably would have been a lot more nervous had I known what the score was,” Liang said. “Overall, [the games] were really tight and so we worked really hard to support each other.”

Although it was a tight game, senior and captain Michael Ding says that the team performed well as the players were aggressive and capitalized on opportunities to gain points. He hopes that the team will continue to maintain this intensity and use its win as a learning experience to further improve in the upcoming games.

“Today, we had a bunch of people cheering for all the games,” Ding said. “We’re pretty excited about [Thursday’s] game [against Lynbrook High School]. We’ll switch up the lineup a little, learn from our mistakes and hopefully win.”

Gallery • 10 Photos

Anna Jerolimov

Sophomore Daphne Huang hits the birdie with her backhand. Huang won her Varsity 1 Girls Singles match in 2 sets with scores of 21-6 and 21-5.