Defeat defined the beginning of this year’s badminton season, as school trips, absences and student commitments forced the team to forfeit 11 out of 63 matches due to missing players.
However, the badminton team maintains a 4-6 record. According to head coach Tess Gauthier, the team could have won more games if they hadn’t been forced to forfeit so many matches.
There are no substitutions in badminton, so if the player is not there, the match is automatically forfeited.
Despite the issues with forfeiting matches, senior Haley Lynch still has a positive outlook for the team. Lynch is the number one singles player for the varsity team. “I think the team is doing great this year,” Lynch said. “Mrs. Gauthier did a good job of figuring out who works well for the doubles teams and helping singles players improve,” she said.
Lynch said that the underclassmen are among the most improved on the team. “There are a lot of underclassmen on the team this year, and they are all doing really well,” Lynch said. “You can already tell that they have improved so much.”
In her first year of playing badminton, freshman Marina Comits, a doubles player on the JV team, is constantly improving with Gauthier’s help.
Gauthier says the team is at the level she wants them to be. “We are right in the middle [of the standings],” Gauthier said. “We haven’t been able to get matches against the teams that are at the top because we haven’t had a full group there,” she said.
Having the full team present and ready to play is going to be especially important in the playoffs.
According to Gauthier, individual victories determine the overall winner of the tournament, as each individual victory will gain the team points. The better the individual players do, the better the team will do.
Lynch has high hopes for the conference tournament. “I think with a little more practice, we could do well in the championships,” Lynch said. “The more we play, the closer we come to beating the schools that are the best.”