Varsity Badminton fell to Milpitas High School 19-11 in its first game of the season on Thursday, March 6. MVHS won five of the 12 matches — one match in Boys Singles, two in Boys Doubles, one in Mixed Doubles and one in Girls Doubles.
Coming out of the off-season, senior and girls doubles player Trisha Subramanyam and senior and mixed doubles player Pranavi Annaluru believe a significant factor in their loss was that many players were still adjusting to the season. Considering that this was the team’s first game, players may have been out of practice. However, they believe the team has a strong season ahead of them, noting the importance of learning from their experiences with MHS going forward.
“One thing that we can do is to figure out how they play and what their playing strategies are and how they are different from ours,” Annaluru said. “By doing that, we can make sure that in the future, we don’t miss the same shots and that we try to regroup and strategize as we are playing.
Regardless of the loss, both Annaluru and Subramanyam believe that MVHS has decently improved from last season. Head Coach Russell Okuno agrees, explaining that even though MHS was ranked second in the league last season, MVHS put up a strong fight with many close matches.
“Our match was much closer than last year,” Okuno said. “I think all schools go through some turnover because of seniors graduating and some players deciding not to play, but I feel that our team did pretty well since we have good freshmen coming in and it being a home match. Overall, most of the team played really well.”
With the rest of the season ahead of them, Okuno feels that this game was a hopeful start and plans to leverage the remaining time to work toward improving their skills, both physically and mentally.
“A lot of the skills in play actually take pretty long to master, to some extent,” Okuno said. “So, it’s going to be a long process, but the players should be able to make significant improvements over the time of this whole season. Yesterday’s match was really good. In fact, they played pretty well. I saw a lot of areas where they can improve, and if we just keep working on those areas and try to be conscious of them, we can definitely succeed.”
