Smashing through preseason matches
Powering into the new spring season with precision, the Diamond Bar High School badminton team triumphs over rivaling schools.
With a current season record of 4-0, the team is off to an impressive start and shows no signs of slowing down—setting a strong foundation for their ultimate goal of making CIF.
“The season is going pretty well in terms of hard work and practice,” head coach Kemp Wells said. “That is always the standard, and people have been doing a great job there.”
The Brahmas are leading a dominant season, sweeping through teams and encountering few close calls.
“So far we haven’t had a real tough match. One was fairly close because we’ve had to split our team into two. And it makes it difficult, and we were missing three starters for varsity,” Wells said. “We had to replace about six players, so one team was closer than anticipated. Overall, players did a good job in that match.”
But despite their unfaltering success, the team faced a couple of setbacks this season in terms of practice and preparation.
“Every group wants gym time, and even this year, we’ve had to split the gym far more than we’ve had to in the past,” Wells said. “It makes it difficult to have a consistent practice to get all the players prepared properly.”
The team also lost some extremely skilled seniors to graduation. But according to Wells, this complication was resolved with skilled underclassmen.
“Even though we lost two of the top players—to lose two players of that magnitude, you think it’d take a big step back. But we’ve had so many good underclassmen last year, and now they’re ready to really destroy [other schools],” Wells said.
Currently, the team is mainly focused on preparation for the more difficult schools this season.
“We know that there’s two [schools] to worry about,” Wells said. “Walnut was the best team last year in all of CIF, and Arcadia beat us in the championship.”
Overall, Wells said that the team has high hopes for this season and many goals to attain.
“Our first goal is to win league, and we have to beat Walnut to do that. Then after that, it’s to go as deep as we can in the playoffs—which usually means the championship game—and hopefully we’ll be able to win this year,” Wells said.
The team’s next game is against Walnut High School in an away match on April 13.
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