Varsity Badminton lost to Cupertino High School 19-11 on Tuesday, April 2. MVHS won six matches while CHS won nine, ultimately giving CHS the win. MVHS won two games in Boys Singles and one game in Girls Singles, Boys Doubles, Girls Doubles and Mixed Doubles respectively.
Freshman and Varsity 3 Girls Singles player Nandita Joshi won her game with the set scores 21-18 and 21-13. Joshi notes that she played against the same opponent during her last game against CHS, and needed three sets to win against them before. Although MVHS fell to CHS, she feels that MVHS has the potential to win against CHS in the future.
“I think Cupertino was also really good as a team,” Joshi said. “I was watching a lot of other games. They hit a lot of good shots. I think we’re not too far from them. Hopefully we can meet them again sometime in the future.”
Junior and Varsity 2 Boys Doubles player Harshvardhan Patil and his partner sophomore Ryan Wong also won their doubles match, scoring 21-16 and 21-17. Patil found that the game was relatively easy as the defense on CHS’ side was lacking. He attributes the win to the strong cooperation between him and his teammate.
“Our chemistry is still going good — me and Ryan — we’re playing good,” Patil said. “Something we could do better is the shots landing in the middle. They are still a little bit tough because he’s left-handed. We’re still just adjusting to that.”
Badminton Coach Russell Okuno agrees that the players were paired together well, stating that the pairings were one of the key differences when playing against CHS a second time. He emphasizes the team’s improvement compared to its last match against CHS.
“We had a better combination of players out there today,” Okuno said. “The players gained a little more confidence from last time. One thing we did better overall is that one of our top singles players played doubles last time. This time he played singles and he won the number one singles position, so that was really good.”
Patil agrees that the team has been improving constantly. He highlights the team’s training and looks forward to more opportunities to play throughout the rest of the season.
“I feel like we’ve had a rough season so far, but we’ve been practicing,” Patil said. “We’ve been getting better every day so we hope to win more games.”
