The badminton team has had a very uneasy start to what may be a tough season. For weeks, the Badminton team has been attempting to find an official varsity coach.

In mid-January, returning members of the team received news that neither coaches from last year would be returning to coach this year’s team. From that moment on things were up in the air and students were scrambling to come up with ideas for a coach. Senior Courtney Darcy was one of several returning players who took the unofficial responsibility of finding someone who would be willing to take the position of coach for the badminton team.

Several people were named and asked but in the end, Coach Marcos Arebalo and Mr. Ruben Castaneda, who also has the position of Head of Security, took on the roles of Varsity and Junior Varsity coaches, respectably.

However, they may have just made a close call, because the Badminton team only received about a week and a half of actual training before they were thrust onto the courts for a pre-season match on March 5^th.

New member, Jose Leal (12^th grade) says “I don’t really think that we were very prepared, we started practicing really late.”

Thursday’s game at Gladstone proved to be true to what Leal said. A lack of a sure coach in time lead to many members forgetting to have a physical examination form turned in before game day and resulted in several forfeited points. On top of that CIF regulations changed and games are now rally scored. At the end of the day Bassett was sent home with a score of 1 to 20 for varsity and 5 to 16 for JV.

Both coaches plan on working on building technique for the players. Being able to move around the courts efficiently (either with a partner for doubles, or alone for singles) will be the main focus for this season.