Long Beach High School welcomes badminton team

Long Beach High School has a new addition to fall sports. Since last year, after playing in gym and after participating in the Badminton for Breast Cancer Tournament, a group of students had an urge to create a team of their own. Students later heard that other schools had teams and finally brought the idea to the attention of Athletics Director Arnie Epstein. Soon enough, badminton was on its way at LBHS.

Varsity coach Andrew Rossi had 29 students try out and 19 made the team, which won five of its first 12 matches. “The kids are wonderful, they demonstrate good teamwork and have potential to be a great team,” said Rossi, excited to see how the team does this season.

The team is made up mostly of freshmen and sophomores. Because it’s a first-year and young team, Rossi has high expectations for the future. There are 14 matches in the regular season plus the county tournament. A match consists of seven games: three singles and four doubles. In singles, the top three players of each team play each other, and the rest play doubles. Those students who are not in singles or doubles play as alternates and play other alternates. Rossi hopes to send a number of his students to play in the county tournament. Great additions are seniors Alsodee Reyes and Zach Verch and junior Zak Seghrouchni. Reyes is varsity captain and “is a natural athlete,” Rossi said. “He’s great on catching on quick in learning about the new sport and works great with Seghrouchni.” Together they work well and pull victories against other doubles and hopefully defeat against all odds. Seated at No 1 is Verch, who “puts in great effort along with the team,” Rossi emphasized. Sophomore Andrew Schnier plays third singles.

“It is surely a great addition because there are so many of us who love playing it in gym, and there will be many kids that will come up into the high school that will become great additions to the team,” Schnier said. So far, he believes the team works great together and enjoy playing against other schools. “I will most definitely plan on doing this again next year,” Schnier said.

Badminton is a popular sport in southeast Asia and in Europe. However, in the United States it is considered a “backyard sport.” Yet on Long Island it has become popular. Some schools appear to have really good competition because they practice year round.

Rossi didn’t know there were many teams that were competitive in other schools, but he has hope and feels LBHS has a developing team. He has seen great improvement in the span of three weeks.

Jennifer Zarate is a junior at Long Beach High School. Comments about her column? JKellard@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 213.