Badminton is typically an Asian dominated sport and I myself am Mexican.

Although I was intimidated when first joining, first because it was a new sport and second, I didn’t know the people. However I was met with pure kindness and acceptance. I soon realized that my race didn’t matter and my effort did. Hoover High School’s Badminton team is currently ranked as D1, in sports the teams are ranked on how good they are for example if a sport is ranked D3 then it means they’re not bad but they’re not great either. Hoover now being D1 mean’s last season we did really well and moved and it’s tru because last season we went undefeated, but just because we won every game didn’t mean we were not pushed harder and called out for our mistakes. Improvement is needed everywhere, especially in sports.

Badminton consists of a birdie and a racket. The birdie is what is hit across the court and the racket is what we hit the birdie with. In P, playing badminton might just be hitting the bird and making it across the net and hitting it twice to do that, that’s what I did. However the sport itself is much more complex than that. The reflex that is needed to lunge across the court to hit the birdie and lunge back to the middle so that you can anticipate where your opponent will hit next, all within a span of 5 seconds sometimes less is intense. The sport needs strength in the legs, quick on your feet, and effort. Badminton can be seen as a mental sport since sometimes it’s just you on the court, and talking from experience once your mentality is down, you start to play with less effort cause you’ve already given up.

Badminton itself is a good sport that helps with stress and allows for self growth because you need to trust yourself more and believe in your capability. It also pushes you to want to get better just like with other sports. Since there are no referees for this level a lot of players play with high integrity.