By Stan Bischof
We ended the regular season with a 10-2 record, losing only to Elsie Allen which came in first to our second.
Based on the season performances, the coaches get together and select an All League team—basically the best lineup we can put together using players from all the teams. We had six players (juniors Caitlyn Parker, Alex Francis, Edgar Navarro, Estrella Santiago plus seniors Andy Duran and Esteban Guzman) selected for this all-star team.
The real star of our team and of the league is Caitlyn (Caity) Parker. She was undefeated at #1 singles and #1 mixed doubles and ended the season with a 25-0 personal record, outscoring her singles opponents by a wide margin (total 504-162 making the average game 21-7).
For this reason she was selected as one of two League MVPs, the other being senior Jayden Hernandez from Windsor. I fully expect her to dominate next year also.
This week there were tournaments to decide who would progress to the NCS level. Two Healdsburg singles (juniors Alex Francis and Edgar Navarro) made the cut as well one doubles team (seniors Esteban Guzman and Andy Duran). They competed on May 17 in Fremont.
Since they haven’t played doubles in quite a while their first match did not go well. Doubles requires good coordination between partners which wasn’t there yet. The second match they began playing much better doubles and eked out a win. For the third match they played quite well together but met stronger opponents so lost a fairly close match.
Our last event as a team will be a team dinner May 22 at the local Healdsburg Bollywood restaurant. Since we have many seniors, next year will be a recruiting year. I will host open badminton sessions at Healdsburg High for current and incoming students who are perhaps interested in badminton.
Stan Bischof has been a badminton coach since 1993; in Healdsburg since 2019.
