The Paly badminton team carries a heavy handicap for this year’s season due to the loss of the majority of the varsity team. With a record of 4-8 last year, the success of the upcoming season is unsure.

The graduation of key players like Damian Wang, George Wang, Sam Ng, Yao Yu and Stephanie Hsi lowered the number of players with the experience of SCVALs and CCS for the Paly team. Although senior mixed doubles player Mariya Pitel and senior doubles player Alex Kreitz are still here after playing in SCVALs last year, both of their partners have graduated.

“This season is definitely going to be worse than last year,” junior Brandon Chen said. “Most of our good players are all gone.”

After a preseason practice match, the difference of strength from last year is evident. Paly only won by a measly one point against Homestead, who is in a lower league.

“It’s not surprising that the varsity [game] was so close because we were missing people.” head coach Kara Prentice said.

“If we had last year’s Varsity, we would have beaten them by more points,” sophomore Joanna Wu said.

Even after the close practice match, Prentice remains optimistic.

“It [The loss of last year’s seniors] won’t affect [the team] too much.” Prentice said. “Our boys are still here and the new players are strong, and boys doubles and singles, and mixed doubles are pretty strong too.”

“The juniors from last year are capable of replacing the graduated seniors,” sophomore Vika Kreitz said.

This season will be used to build a stronger team for next year since only six players will be graduating, according to Prentice. Plus, the team remains confident that they be last in the league.

“We’ll definitely win against Milpitas since they came up from the lower league,” Wu said.

“We may beat Gunn and hope maybe to beat Monta Vista and Wilcox,” Prentice said.

Whether the team can manage to replace lost players is yet to be determined, but the matches of this season will tell if Paly can still hold its spot in the league. Paly’s first match ended with a score of 2-39 against Monta Vista. The next match will be held 3:30 p.m. on March 9th at Wilcox.