Reaching for Gold – From APAC to GISAC Badminton

Tri-cities, ACAMIS, and now finally, last but not least, Super APAC. The Ram’s badminton team has experienced some of the most competitive and most challenging matches of the team history, with the addition of the greatest amount of games ever played by the school’s badminton team. Despite going through a significant change in roosters throughout the school year, not only compared to last year but also compared to the beginning of the season, the final athletes determined to play in APAC were chosen and sent off to the International School of Beijing to compete in a 12-team Super-APAC competition.

The 16 member team, comprised of 8 boys and 8 girls, travelled to the capital city few weeks back,  competing of 11 schools, with the addition of a combo teamed formed by the Junior Varsity athletes of the International School of Beijing and Western Academy of Beijing. With most of team made up of freshman, their journey to a whole new environment, especially under the land of pollution and the dome of ISB undoubtedly were some fascinating aspects of the APAC trip. The Ram’s badminton team took off in their games in their white, red and blue polos, challenging some of the top badminton players of all the international high schools around Asia. After 3 days of downs and highs, the Ram’s despite having losses, stood out in many of the different divisions of badminton competition. Boys’ first singles player, Javin Liu was one of them. Despite being a Freshman in his first badminton APAC tournament, he carried his mentality and experience as a third time APAC competitor and led himself to a strong 9th place finish out of the 24 player bracket. On the girl’s side, another 9th grader was also able to make a name out of herself. Michelle Zhu fought her way to the semifinals, eventually only falling to a senior player of SAS PX, winning herself and unfortunate 4th place out of the girls’ singles 24 player bracket while carrying a major ankle injury throughout her games. Last but not least, senior player Roger Wei teamed up with freshman Michael Zhou in boys doubles, winning themselves a position also in the top 8, eventually returning home with 6th out of 24. As a team, the boys managed to win a decent 7th place, with the girls working their way up from a final place of 9 th overall.

Each player, or each pairs of two, played up to 15 games over the course of merely 3 days, leaving the players in pain and soreness. There were wins and losses of the season, but ultimately, the APAC tournament left every single team member with great experience and sportsmanship of the game. Unfortunately, 8 of the 16 badminton players knew that even though they were in such strain from the APAC tournament, another major, and last, badminton tournament – the local and newly formed, GISAC badminton tournament.

Hosted by Clifford International School in Pan Yu, 4 boys and 4 girls of the original APAC team strived for another achievement of the year. Despite only having 4 teams, including two from Clifford and one from British School of Guangzhou other than AISG, the athletes did not simply let their opponents take away the grand prize of 1st place. The Rams brutally won themselves 4 first places out of the 5 divisions, including both girls and boys’ singles, boys’ doubles and mixed doubles. Girls’ doubles also were able to gain 2nd place after a long and complex battle between Clifford’s top competitor. In addition to the Ram’s unsettling urge to win, the AISG athletes did not give up on sportsmanship, and also brought home the most valuable award of the sportsmanship trophy.

The badminton season of 2016 went through multiple exhaustive tournaments, wearing players down and forcing them to get up over and over again. Whatsoever, the Ram’s badminton team had quite a successful year, winning a total of three trophies, and just a near miss to individual medals such as girls’ singles and boys’ doubles.