The March 26 women’s varsity badminton match against IND was tied 3-3, and all the pressure was on the final doubles team game. After winning the first game and losing the second, juniors and doubles partners Julia Burke and Sarah Szoka quickly discussed their strategy before grabbing their rackets and heading back onto the court.
“There was a lot of pressure [on us] because we knew we had to win that game to win it [the match] for our team,” Szoka said. “But we were pretty confident because the IND girls were getting tired, and you could tell. They just weren’t playing as well anymore.”
Burke and Szoka dominated the court in the final game, taking an early lead and never looking back. Szoka smashed the shuttlecock over the net to score the last point, making the final score JC 21, IND 12.
The Patriots’ victory over IND was sweetened when they defeated St. Paul’s in their following game on March 29, 5-2.
All three singles players won their matches. Junior Haley Lynch and senior Gabby Popoli won in two games, while junior Meg Kirchner went to a third game, winning 21-13.
“She did a great job battling,” Coach Tess Gauthier said of Kirchner’s performance, noting that Kirchner seemed to have a specific plan of attack before every play.
Doubles partners senior Kelly Alban and junior Maggie Kinser won in two games, as did sophomore team Emily Kegan and Megan Foard. Burke and Szoka lost in two games, and the other doubles team consisting of junior Ellen Barker and senior Lexi Rittenhouse lost in their third game.
Before heading into the match against top-ranked Garrison Forest on March 30, Gauthier said she expected that the competition “will be tough” but that skillful playing on the Patriots’ side would make an impact.
Both teams “played tight, very close games, and the games could have gone either way,” Gauthier said. “The scores just came out the wrong way for us.”
The Patriots lost 0-7, and Gauthier said that several of the games were back-and-forth the whole time. She noted that Barker and Rittenhouse lost by only three points in the third game, 18-21. “We could have beaten them, but the team just couldn’t pull it off,” Gauthier said.
The Patriots’ next scheduled match is at St. Timothy’s, where both Gauthier and Szoka expect to see a win.
Looking ahead to the rest of the season, Szoka predicts that the season “is going to be a challenge because we play very good teams. It really just depends on how we keep up our energy, but I definitely think we’ll have a pretty good shot in the tournament if we just keep practicing and working on the things that we are having a little bit of trouble with now.”
Jenny Hottle can be reached for comment at [email protected].