On April 25th GP’s girls’ badminton team played in their last game of the season against their WESCO rivals, Snohomish High School. Glacier Peak and Snohomish are the only schools in the district to have a badminton team, so when they play against each other, they get competitive. Throughout the year the Grizzlies have fought hard having won most of their games so far. In the last game against Snohomish, Glacier Peak won 9-2 so this final game will settle the score, ending on either a tie, or a massive defeat over Snohomish.
For people who do not know how badminton works, games are set up like so: before starting each team will line up facing each other, varsity is introduced one by one while their opponent is also introduced, after all varsity players are announced JV steps forward. The game starts with varsity; six courts of singles play first alongside four courts of doubles, having one set sit on the sidelines until a court opens. The audience sits above the gym able to look at every game happening below, within this audience also sits JV cheering on their team. A birdie is smacked down, its point deciding which team will be the first to serve, the person on the right will start needing to serve to the court diagonal to them, making it over the net and past the first line, also known as the kitchen, the serve is received and passed back so on and so forth until the birdie touches the floor, not stopping till one side scores 21 points winning by two points..
Once each team finishes, they report their score to their coaches, GP’s coaches being Mr. Divito and Ms. Torre, scores are then tallied up revealing who the winner is. Once each team, and singles players, have finished their rounds the score is posted, “The game started off really rough,” said Mr. Divito, “We were down 1-4 against the team we beat 9-2 the first time around, that was a bit concerning, but our doubles teamed up to win us the final game.”
Glacier Peak won 6-5! During the team party to celebrate the last game of badminton for the season, players were asked about their thoughts on the game. “We freaking crushed it,” said Janna Arnott, “I was nervous that we, my partner and I, wouldn’t win our two matched, but we did!” Another player, Yuana Kobori, expresses her pride for the team. “We were so awesome, I felt like everyone really improved a lot since the beginning, and seeing the growth from our first game to our last game really made me feel so happy.”
Overall, GP made the number one spot on the WESCO 4A board for badminton, reckon Snohomish and Glacier Peak are the only schools in that division, either way, GP crushed Snohomish winning both their games against the team.