Badminton program welcomes new coach

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After the resignation of former badminton coach, Ryan Wong, the badminton program welcomes alumni Jordan Tien into the family once again. He is currently the new head coach of the program. Since he is an alumni that graduated two years ago, the age gap between him and the players is not big, which helped the players feel comfortable around him faster.

“When I was in high school, everyone had different hobbies, but being able to be on a team, playing a sport that we all enjoy, was one of the best experiences I had,” Tien said. “When you’re with them for so many years you become sort of a family. I want [my players] to be able to experience it like I did.”

Junior Carie Tu is grateful for the new coach; however she will definitely miss Mr. Wong as her coach. She did not have any high expectations for badminton last year. This year is a little different. With an alumni coaching for the first time, Tu claims that “this year will be interesting”.

“It was more about what I didn’t expect last year. I didn’t expect that badminton would become such an important aspect of my school life,” Tu said. “To be honest, I only joined so that I could say I was in a sport. I never expected to become friends with such an amazing group of people, nor did I expect badminton to be so much fun.”

Sophomore Andy Ly does not see anything different with practice after a new coach arriving, except the fact that there is more running, which means more practice. Coach Tien has some pointers he wants to give to his team.

“Have fun. Having fun doesn’t mean [messing] around at all the practices and not taking it seriously, because if all you do is screw around and then when actual league games come and you lose, it doesn’t become fun anymore. Practice is called practice for a reason,” Tien advised.

Tien says that badminton is not appreciated as much as it should be, since the program more than likely gets the least practice time of all the sports, but thankfully still manages to do pretty well.

“Badminton isn’t some backyard casual game,” Tien said. “A real badminton match is fast paced, with smashes that fly over 100 mph.”