The Piedmont Highlander

The Student News Site of Piedmont High School

The Piedmont Highlander

The Piedmont Highlander

Badminton: we got game

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DSC_1601Incredulous looks. Disparaging remarks. Dismissive laughs.

Those are the typical reactions to me complaining about how sore I am after a badminton practice or having to wait until the basketball season is over to draw regulation-length court lines with tape. The majority of people at our school tend to dismiss badminton as not a “real” sport, or not on the same level of play as say basketball or football. These same people also tend to be misinformed about badminton and rely on stereotypes to justify their assumptions.

In America, it may be true that most high-profile athletics are contact sports, but this is in no way a basis to discredit badminton; there are plenty of non-contact sports that are widely accepted by the American public as legitimate sports, such as baseball or tennis. What distinguishes badminton from these sports is mainly that it is less well-known. Many people have never seen a professional badminton game. They think that because they could hit a birdie over a net in PE class, it’s an easy sport that requires no real athleticism.

And yet one of the reasons badminton is so low-profile is that American players, even professional ones, are largely unable to compete with players from other countries, particularly from Asia. This means that the highest levels of badminton play are dominated by players from China, Korea, Japan, Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia, with only the occasional Danish or German player to stand against them. So given the idea of American exceptionalism and the prejudices and stereotypes many Americans have against Asians, as well as a myriad of other reasons like the lack of violence for spectators and the need for indoor courts and expensive racquets to play, it is easy to understand why badminton isn’t popular in the US.

However, this is no excuse to continue to disparage badminton as a sport. It’s been an Olympic sport since 1992, and although no contact is made between players and brute strength is not the only skill required, badminton is still a game that requires vast levels of agility, precision, coordination, strategy, stamina and, yes, power, as well as lightning-quick reaction times. In fact, the fastest badminton hit recorded outside of a game was Malaysian Tan Boon Heong’s 306 mph smash. During gameplay, Guinness World Records cites Chinese Fu Haifeng’s 206 mph smash as the fastest. Compare this to tennis, where Guinness lists Australia’s Samuel Groth’s 163.4 mph serve. If you’re still not convinced, search the Internet for videos of birdies being hit, embedded into and cracking whole watermelons, or Google any combination of the words “badminton” and an adjective like “crazy.”

So the next time you have something to say about badminton, please be prepared to back it up. Or I’ll come at you with my racquet. Just kidding, that thing costs like $300. I’ll use somebody else’s.

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