Spring sports previews: Badminton

Badminton at Evergreen Valley has traditionally been notorious for its huge team sizes and killer conditioning sessions. This season, however, new head coaches Tina and Gus Liu have begun to change much of this. Over 180 eager athletes were eventually cut down to 24 varsity slots through a vigorous process of evaluations by the coaches, a process that took over two weeks due to the tremendous turnout.

The team looks to build upon its tremendous success in the past, including a Mt. Hamilton Division championship in 2006, a runner-up finish in 2007, and 3rd place a year ago. The Cougars will likely be challenged by their chief rival, Independence High School, which has won or shared a piece of the A division title each of the last three seasons. Top returning players for Evergreen Valley include Melissa Le (girls doubles), Jenny Yee (girls doubles), Samantha Lee (singles and girls doubles), Sarah Lee (singles and girls doubles), and Sheena Tsang (mixed doubles) on the girls side and Joey Nguyen (mixed doubles), Quoc Dang (singles), and Shaun Ngo (singles) for the boys.

The Cougar badminton team will open up its league campaign on Tuesday, March 24 at home vs. Santa Teresa at 3:30 PM. The squad is looking for a strong start after starting sluggishly last season with a 8-7 loss to Westmont.