Feature image taken by Kenji Tan.

Though this season of SAISA badminton was short-lived, I still believe this was a very impactful and meaningful experience which taught me numerous valuable lessons both about badminton and of commitment and perseverance in general. Badminton is the one sport I had been training since October of last year to get into because I felt strongly that physical exercise was an aspect of my life that I wanted to work on. Moreover, what was more important to me was to go through the experience of having an ambition that I could strive to reach and would be fully committed. Although I tried to get into the team last year, I was far from even making it into the B team. I even tried for volleyball in the beginning of the year which I was also unable do well at. In my junior year of high school, this gave me a somewhat of a wake up call that I wasn’t putting enough effort into these avenues. So, I thought to myself, if I’m spending so much time and effort in these sports and not getting into the team, what was the purpose of this? I needed to see positive results after the morally degrading experiences I’ve had in the past which ultimately led to the motivation that drove me into training for badminton.

Video taken by Anya Bhatia Arora.

For once, I started seeing better results in my performance with twice a week training outside of school for five months. As badminton tryouts came around in March, I had worked on my smashes, drops, and my footwork to a considerable amount. This allowed me to train with the more advanced group of badminton players under Coach Giana. Even so, competition was clearly tough with experienced players from prior years who were easily just as, or even better, than me. Nevertheless, I worked hard to improve on my tactics, notably with drop shots to the corners as well as unexpected smashes to the sides of the court right as I receive a serve. One of my favorite tactics was definitely the way I did my serves to confuse my opponents. I would almost always use the backhand serve as it allowed me to accurately serve either very short or very far. For the majority of my serves, I would be close to the net and would serve short, as a result, sometimes I’d be able to catch my opponent off-guard when I suddenly serve very far and high instead.

Image taken by Anya Bhatia Arora.

It is very unfortunate that the season will not continue, I for one was devastated after the amount of time, effort, and even money that was used to get to this stage. I was especially looking forward to going to Mumbai for the SAISA tournament as I made friends with some of the students there over SAISA music and we were planning to meet up. With that said, I’ve learnt that this experience has given me the valuable trait of perseverance through my consistent training which can be applied to any field. As long as I keep myself motivated with an aim in mind, I can put myself on a path to improve myself constantly. As a final note, I will continue to strive to reach the A team level of badminton so that next year when I come back, I’ll be ready to play harder than ever.