From the Hartford Courant
I Am...An Athlete
"I Am ...," appearing every other Monday, explores the life experiences of teenagers and young adults in their own words.
BY TIA ANN CHAPMAN, The Hartford Courant
April 21, 2008
Simsbury High School sophomore Elena Warters is the captain of the girls' badminton team. Before practice in the school gym, she talks about what it means to play a sport that many do not take seriously.
Badminton is sometimes a little bit of a joke at our school. I don't know — it's just [that] kids don't really take it seriously, but it's actually kind of an intense sport. They have little banners for each sport, and then they have the years that we won the state championships, and we've won a few.
I think they see it as a joke because they haven't really played much, and when they play it's just in gym and the kids they're playing haven't played as much and don't really know how to play so they just don't really know what badminton is.
If you're playing people that are better than you, [then] they hit some shots that are really, really hard to get. There's smashes, clears, drops, a lot of other shots.
It's kind of hard, though, because there's not that many girls on our team so we all have to play the seniors and the juniors at the other schools, so it's just harder to play them. They're better than we are sometimes, and we should be trying harder. I know that sounds kind of mean. But we could beat them if we tried.
I kind of hope that we have more freshman girls that join next year because this year we had no freshman girls join. But I just think it wasn't communicated well enough when it started and how to join.
Just take it as part of who I am. I am a badminton player.
Copyright © 2008, The Hartford Courant
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