Badminton differs from many sports. For one, it is only played with one or two players. Players can also play in both singles and doubles, unlike other racket sports. One thing that seems to be common through the years is that many players don’t have much or any experience before tryouts.

Varsity Badminton Coach, Mike Shubert, takes on these challenges firsthand. One way that Shubert found helpful in teaching new potential players was to have as many open gyms in the summer as he could. Girls get an opportunity to kind of learn the fundamental skills before the start of the season,” 4-year Head Coach, Shubert said.

What exactly are those fundamental skills? Badminton is a rally-racket sport whose main objective is to successfully land a birdie on the opponent’s side of the court, without it legally being returned. According to Shubert, a key skill in doing that is footwork. Good quality footwork is the most vital fundamental skill a player can have, according to their coach. He also says it is the hardest.

“There’s a lot. Probably the hardest is the most fundamental, and that’s really good quality footwork and being able to move across the court effortlessly, for an entire game, because it lasts a while, especially when you’re playing singles, Shubert said.

Varsity player, Aurora Thorson, agrees with Coach Shubert.

“Footwork [is the most difficult skill to learn], just because it’s such a big part of the game, and I love practicing it because it helps so much,” Thorson said.

Unlike most sports, where children could play at a very young age, badminton was a new sport for many of the girls. Badminton didn’t really have entry levels like “peewee baseball” or a “beginner ballet class for toddlers”; most players’ only exposure to badminton was 45-minute gym classes in middle school.

Thorson, unlike a lot of girls on the team, actually had a little experience playing badminton prior to her freshman year. She owned her own backyard net when she was little and played in middle school, which got her more passionate about the sport. With that prior experience, she was “so ready to start [her] freshman year.”

What about the majority of girls who didn’t have prior experience, or even came from different sports? Fellow Varsity Player, Roslid Knox, actually started her athletic career in gymnastics and swimming. By the time she got to high school, she wanted to try an in-school sport for a change. Even with little experience, she worked her way up to Varsity and ended up really loving the sport.

A big role in that was the open gyms. Many of the girls prepare for the season by practicing at open gyms, whether that be the open gyms that were held at school or outside open gyms that the team went to.

Pioneer Net is an open net where a lot of the girls go to practice. Players attending both open nets strengthen how vital the preparation is before any meets.

The season goes extremely fast, as players have a meet only one-two weeks after tryouts. The girls say they don’t get much of a preseason, nor time to prepare.

Caroline Jankowski, another varsity badminton player, says this about the fast season.

“We have about a week, but if you consider not with the season, we have all year to prepare and train together and hang out, get to know each other,” Jankowski, senior, said.

This brings another important aspect of badminton: teamwork. After all, a lot of badminton is played in doubles (or two players vs two players), so teamwork is most certainly a key aspect that encourages the girls to work harder.

“I play doubles badminton [with] my partner Victoria Tran, [which] encourages me to do well, because we both have to be able to hold up our own ends when it comes to playing together,” Roslind Knox said.

Not only do the girls showcase teamwork on the court, but they also do so off the court. The girls seem to thrive on the notion of uplifting each other during games and even practices.

“I love the people who are in badminton with me who are very close. I know a lot of the people in the team, and I love how we always lift each other up to be successful,” Jankowski said.

Thorson talks about how her coach encourages her through the season.

“It’s so much, honestly, he’s very good at saying, ‘Hey, that was a good shot’, [which makes me think], ‘Oh yeah, man, I’m pretty good at [this] sport’.