Varsity badminton moves on to California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) playoffs after going undefeated at the Hacienda League finals on Sunday, April 26.

The Hacienda league finals, which took place at Rowland High School, would have multiple schools play each other in a 16 player bracket. Schools that participated were Cerritos, Chino Hills, Diamond Bar, and Rowland.

“A lot of the rallies were really hard and fast, and the games were close but [in the  end] I found it very fun after playing against multiple harder opponents,” mixed sophomore player Bryce Hsu said.

Since there were multiple schools participating in badminton singles, doubles and mixed, because of this the tournament was formatted as a knockout bracket. Hsu played and won two of his three games against Cerritos (21-15) and Rowland High School (21-13), doubles sophomore player Kendra Wu played and won against Wilson (21-11) and Diamond Bar (21-5) and moved on to playoffs.

“When I was going up [the bracket] after defeating my opponent, I felt happy that my efforts did not go to waste,” Wu said. “I was mostly thinking about staying consistent, but it was nice to have my teammates cheer us on when playing.”

As the event moved forward and the bracket started to place the best players from all schools against each other, multiple schools would begin to get knocked out from the league finals, the Mustangs would take first place in the single’s division and third in the doubles division.

“I knew I was going to win, not because the other players were bad but because I never gave up even when I was down on points,” singles senior player Abraham Xu said. “[Even] during breaks I only thought of how I can gain the advantage on the court and after each win I felt a sense of relief and excitement for the next game.” Ω