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Yesterday was the first day of the Wednesday night badminton session that JP and I registered for at a local community centre. I haven’t played at that particular place for a long time and it’s the first time I registered for a session there. Anyways, the courts at the community centre are pretty decent, with a lot of space between the back lines and the walls. Of course the courts aren’t as good as those in a badminton centre, but they are not too bad for a community centre gym.
Playing in the session is pretty straight forward. JP and I just wrote our names on the sheet and then wait for our turn. They played 15 point rule instead of the 21 point rule I’ve been playing recently, so the game dynamics are a bit different. Our first game was against a mixed doubles pair with who are JP’s acquaintances. We dominated the game and won 15-4. After the win I was feeling pretty good about myself, but this soon changes at the second game. Our second game was against two guys. We sprung out to a 5-1 lead, and then disaster struck. For some reason, I just keep missing the bird or hitting it into the net no matter what I tried. My sudden down turn cost us the game and we lost 8-15. I had a little stomach ache problem earlier in the day so that may have been the cause, but I’m not going to blame my poor showing on that. After the game, JP told me to calm down and try to hit some clears instead of trying to attack constantly. I tried to take his advice to heart and we marched off to our third game. This time our opponents were another mixed pair. They were pretty skilled and stronger than our first opponents. In the first half of the game I was still performing poorly and we fell behind 6-11. At that point of time I knew I needed to turn things around, so I just told myself to stop trying to smash every high shot and hit some clears. Lo and behold that actually started working, and we manage to even the game at 11 a piece. Most of the point we lost were due to my mistakes, but it’s a lot harder to make mistakes when hitting clears. Of course, my performance was still inconsistent at the point and the opponents gained a two point lead 11-13. Once we got the service back though I decided that I was going to go for the win right there. What followed was probably my best performance of the night and we scored four straight points to win the game 15-13. I was making all the shots during this time span, which included a laser-like drive that just blew past our opponents before they realized what happened. That was my shot of the night I think.
After the big comeback win JP and I played two more games, but we won both of them pretty easily since the opponents were weaker and I got my stroke back. Overall last night was a pretty good session and I got some much needed exercise. It’s nice to finally play with another group people since for two months straight I was playing with the same group of people. This badminton session goes until the end of August, so during this time I will play two times per week, which I think is probably as much as I can take haha.