EPTThis is a weekly blog (not anymore) on a badminton course (and of other things to keep things interesting) I started in January. Once a week, I, along with a bunch of younger and better players, try to learn how to play badminton properly with the eventually goal of trying to become better. My more selfish goal is to not lose against people in my school games.
The first week was high clears. Last week was clears and drops, or net drops from back and front. This week was endurance, form and a little bit of dropping.
If you've been keeping up with the blogs, you'll realize I usually cannot get through warm ups. And the same happened this week. I ran out of energy. But something changed.
This time, after the warm ups, we were told to run 10 laps. Usually we only run 5 or 6. The same positions were held for 6 laps or so, with me in second last place. But at the 6th or 7th lap, something felt different. Not a good different mind you. People were getting slower and I decided to cut the girl in front of me. But suddenly, I felt this tinge in my upper body. Like my body was starving or going into overdrive. Something I've never experienced. But suddenly, I didn't take my regular strides. My strides were huge, taking advantage of my height. And I zoomed past everyone with this ridiculous surge or energy. I lapped the past leader even. It was an amazing experience, and I've never been more thrilled. Except once. But more on that later.
We had substitute coaches this week. The regulars were competing in a tournament. Lucky them. So the substitutes decided to teach us form. We would our arms perpendicular to the body and swing fully extended without dropping the arms. We did this for 30 minutes. I couldn't even feel my arms. But I can see why we did this.
Next we did drops while trying to keep the form. My brain was overloaded. We were told to move our off-hand backwards when the racket hand goes forward. But if I thought of doing that, I would miss the birdie. If I focused on hitting the birdie, my form would be incorrect. It was an annoying experience to completely change how your body does something. Not to mention my drops turn up like smashes. I hit my partner in the face. Yay.
That was the gist of my day. Along with net drops and rotating positions with my parnter.
A bright point! My partner said bye to me. He is much better than me and I haven't really been the best partner since I haven't really returned his clears, or cleared for him high enough, or gave him good enough drops, but something happened, and he said bye when we left. Success! Maybe he was wowed by my ability to keep playing even though I sucked.
The badminton experience this week was amazing. I hope I see such drastic improvement every time until the end. Which is why I won't update this anymore. I always analyze the day in these blogs to see how I've grown. If I analyze once more at the end of my course, I can marvel even more at my improvement. And it'd be a nice example of how much you can actually improve with real coaching.
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The weirdest thing happened during badminton as well. I got there earlier than usual because the grip of my racket was peeling (pealing?). I re-learned how to hold my racket the first day. The part where my thumb secures the racket with the v-grip is developing a callous, but it's also rubbing on the racket, and tearing the grip.
So I wanted to get it replaced.
First off, there are like 7 different grips available. I have no clue what I'm supposed to get. So I ask her. She recommended that I took some basic coloured grip. But my old racket had that, and it very quickly wore out. So she suggested that I use this "Wilson Pro Overgrip Perforated."
The clueless person that I am said yes, and I bought it. Since it was my first time, she offered to show me how to wrap a grip properly.
Secondly, this woman is a beast. In like a minute flat (no lie) she peeled my old grip off and secured this new one. And it's not like it was hastily down. She just did it really really well. I have a lot more respect for old Asian badminton women now. Hehe.
When I paid, she charged me 6.30. The grip costs 7.00. That's a 10% discount.
Guess what gives the 10% discount. Membership at the club.
Guess who doesn't have membership at the club. Me.
I just scammed this nice old lady who sold the grip and offered to attach my new grip for me out of 70 cents.
When I realized, I couldn't decide whether to tell her or not. I didn't. And I still feel bad.
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Last October (2010), was the first time that I actually won something. I don't know if anyone's ever experienced this.
Usually people don't win anything important. Yes a few rewards for being 'top student' or something. And maybe a few awards for helping out or whatnot. But usually my achievements are within the school. Never in a huge competition with multiple schools from multiple regions.
In October (or November), me and my team competed in the 2010 McMaster University Engineering and Science Olympics. Yes it sounds nerdy, but hey, what can you do about it.
You simply compete in an event you signed up for a few weeks ago, and complete a project where you design and build something to complete a specific goal.
My event was the Mechanical Transporter. The goal was to design a cart weighing as close to 200g as position, to transport a golf ball 3m after the end of a ramp without anything other than the force of gravity pulling it down. We are given three trials and they measure the distance from the center of the golf ball to the designated target. We do three trials, and take the average of those three plus the square root of the difference of the carts weight from 200g. They want accuracy and precision.
My friends and I competed in this last year, and we failed miserably. As in the car did not make it off the ramp. All three times. This time, we were prepared. We built our own ramp for testing as well.
Our event was during the middle of the day, so we cheated a bit and peeked at our competition.
The first one we saw used some weird flower-power mechanism. It may have been a helicopter blade. It did not go near the target. And I recall the leader of that group going "at least we tried something cool." Yeah, so what. It looked like a flower and it didn't work. The rest of the groups we peeked at during the beginning were pretty unimpressive. One group had some pathetic K'neex cart, but it did surprisingly well. The difference was around 3cm. But the next result was over 10cm off. Before we went up, there was a group that decided to fling their ball to try to land on the target. They had nothing to stop the ball, so it rolled out into the hall and to somewhere no one could measure. Yay.
So it was our turn.
First, the measuring. Last year, we hit 200.0001g on the scale. Obviously that'll be impossible to top. So we got 200.0407g. Pretty good I must say. +0.2 points.
Next, the ramp testing. Our car is made out of K'neex wheels glued on to a wooden frame. It's really just a basic skeleton, but it works. We also had this awesome braking mechanism where you wind it up from the base to determine the distance you want to brake at. Hard to explain. But it brakes.
First things first. We aimed the cart at the target, with some adjustment that we calculated beforehand. Did I say aim? Yes. Just to tell you, we mounted a FECKING LAZER on our cart. We're just that badass.
The first drop. We were just 2.1cm off of the target. Holy crap. Heart pounding. Head spinning. We might actually have a chance!
Second drop. Measured a distance after accounting for the new measurements. 3.3cm off! Beating faster. CAN WE ACTUALLY DO THIS?
The third and final drop. A final adjustment. He lets go of the cart. SUCCESS! 0.7cm off! A quick calculation. A measly 2 points! We might just pull this off!
And then our team realized half the people from our school also in the Olympics were watching and cheering (we're all nerds inside). Partly because our teacher made them and partly because my team had a very high chance of success.
After some relieved and happy looks from my teammates, we stayed back to pack up and watch the rest of the competition. But then we realized, if anyone hit 8cm or more, they'd automatically lose to us, unless they hit perfect 0s. We were relieved to see a girl's team hit 1cm, but be off by 10cm the next time.
We killed the rest of the day by playing games and waiting anxiously for the end time, where they announce the results in some makeshift tent.
Everyone in the competition gathered there, and we found somewhere close to the front. They didn't read the results in any logical order so suddenly, they read Mechanical Transporter.
"Mechanical Transporter. First Place. Section 16. West Hill!"
And suddenly all I could hear were all the people from our school cheering, and my heart pounding. We finally did it. I can't believe we actually won.
It was an amazing experience, my first actual win. Hopefully in the future, there will be more to come.
Thanks for reading. Hope you enjoyed reading.
