On Saturday, May 9, badminton (11-3 record in league) sent their No. 1 boys’ singles player, No. 1 girls’ doubles team, No. 1 mixed doubles partnership, and No. 1 girls’ singles player to compete in the Peninsula Athletic League (PAL) Championship Tournament hosted at Aragon High School.

The event featured the top players from both the Bay Division and the Ocean Division, with each team sending four players to compete. Despite the strong competition, Burlingame excelled in the tournament, with five players qualifying for the Central Coast Section (CCS) Championships on Saturday, May 16. No. 1 singles player sophomore Alvin Ho won his division without dropping a single set and easily secured his spot at CCS.

“I think I actually performed, not bad. Actually, there was only one game where I didn’t do that well, but the rest I played actually really good, especially against the number two seed,” Ho said.

After cruising through the first two rounds with a 21-12, 21-10 win in the first round and a 21-8, 21-7 victory in the second, Ho faced more challenging competition for the first-place match. Ho and his opponent battled back and forth in both sets, with Ho narrowly winning 21-19 and 21-17.

“I think that my opponent definitely got used to my base, and for the other games, he slowed down. But for the final, he definitely started playing more to my pace, because I play a lot faster than him. So he decided to start playing faster and play more flat,” Ho said.

Aside from Ho, No. 1 girls’ doubles seniors Saskia Dankbaar and Ting Ting Wang, as well as No. 1 mixed doubles seniors Brandon Mark and Nicole Huang, were also successful, placing third and fourth in their divisions and qualifying for CCS Championships. According to Wang, she and Dankbaar have only recently started playing together, making their strong performance even more impressive.

“Me and my partner are both mixed players, we played with different partners. So we kind of had to train for a bit, just one week to get used to each other,” Wang said. “It was hard to play girls’ doubles when we’ve been playing mixed, and our opponents were also very well-rounded.”

Even though the PAL tournament included teams from the lower Ocean division, Mark said he was nervous going into his matches because of the strong performance required to qualify for CCS, and the potentially strong individuals competing from the Ocean division.

“Going into it, team performance is different than individual performance. Even though their school team was in the lower league, it doesn’t say much about how the top two players are individually,” Mark said. “So I was scared, because I was expecting the Ocean people to be kind of on our level, and they [would] kind of knock us out, and we wouldn’t be able to qualify. At first, I was scared, and when we actually started to play them, I realized it wasn’t too bad. It’s actually pretty easy.”

According to Mark, the competition at CCS is going to be much more difficult than that at PALs due to the addition of top players from the South and East Bay.

“There’s going to be a lot of people from the South Bay, and I think people from the East Bay. The East Bay and Fremont, they have a lot of badminton clubs, and San Jose has a strong badminton culture,” Mark said. “People commute to Fremont to train all the time. So I’m pretty sure the South Bay has much stronger people than the West Bay has. I’m pretty spooked right now, I’m pretty scared right now.”

Regardless, Ho said he hopes to qualify for the California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) NorCal Regional Badminton Championships on Saturday, May 23, which will require a top-seven finish in the CCS tournament.

“CCS is really tough. I know at least four people that I might not be able to beat, so I’ll try to get fifth or fourth,” Ho said.