Badminton Team Returns with 3rd

Over the weekend, the Rams’ badminton team travelled to Shanghai Pudong to compete in the annual Tri-Cities Badminton tournament between the Western Academy of Beijing, Shanghai American School – Pudong, and lastly ourselves, AISG. Serving as the host school, SAS PD was given the opportunity to invite other schools to participate. Unsurprisingly, the consecutive two-year APAC Badminton champion SAS Puxi was chose to participate, which brought the intensity of the game a whole new level.

Each team had 8 boys and 8 girls participating, divided into pairs of singles, doubles, and mixed players. The first school that the Rams were matched against were the players of WAB. Aggressive in play style and threatening in appearance, the Beijing players intimidated many of players on the team that were participating as first-time athletes. The AISG team was comprised of a total of 4 freshmen boys and 5 freshmen girls, who lacked experience and ferocity against the WAB players. Other than freshman singles player Michelle Zhu, the entire team was defeated, with close games by first doubles pair Michael and Roger, who managed to lead the game, best out of three, to the third set. Unfortunately, the opposing team adapted to their play style and took the game in a close victory.

The first singles player of the Ram’s girls team, Michelle Zhu, had an outstanding performance in her first official high school tournament, winning every single game until her unfortunate injury against SAS Puxi in the second round. Despite being injured, the team still has high hopes and looks forward to her results in APAC.

After two days of struggling and fighting back, the Rams badminton boys managed to bring down Shanghai American School Pudong’s team and bring home the third place trophy. The girls, on the other hand also tried their best, but the other three schools put up a challenging fight against them, leaving them in fourth place.

Next week, the badminton team will be traveling to Utahloy International School to compete in the ACAMIS badminton tournament. With the seniors heading into intense preparation for mock exams, the upcoming ACAMIS tournament will be contested by new players.