With the overall score of 12-31, the badminton game on April 4 against Wilcox showed major improvements for Paly in comparison to previous games. On March 28, Paly earned a score of 9-35 against Saratoga, and since Wilcox defeated Saratoga earlier this season, this Tuesday’s game showed some progress.

The low score against Saratoga may have been due to the lack of players that day, including three missing varsity players. Due to the trend of players not showing up for practice multiple times this year, coach Kara Prentice had no choice but to prohibit players from participating in the Saratoga match. Because this incident hasn’t happened since the Saratoga game, all the lineups for Varsity remained intact for the game against Wilcox.

Although number one singles senior varsity player Anthony Hu failed to win any games against Wilcox’s varsity 1, Dao Tran, Hu still managed to improve his scores since last time Paly played Wilcox. However, junior single’s 2 player Brandon Chen improved even more since the last Wilcox game. Chen was leading 13-8 in the first game before Tran pulled it back up, but Chen still managed to win in the end with the score 15-12. Unfortunately, from there Chen’s rhythm got knocked off balance losing the next two games, 6-15 and 7-15.

Against Wilcox’s singles 2, both varsity boys’ singles had better luck, bringing Paly a total of four wins. Hu and Chen both played two dominating games each with scores of 15-4, 15-6, and 15-5, 15-2, respectively.

For the second time in a row, senior Alex Kreitz and sophomore Lydia Qin teamed up without any practice with each other as teammates for mixed doubles 1. After a shaky, unstable game during the first time they were paired against Lynbrook, Kreitz and Qin managed to pull themselves together for Wilcox. Although they lost both games against Wilcox’s mixed doubles 1, the pair dominated against Wilcox’s mixed doubles 2. In the first game, they won by an overwhelming score of 15-2. Wilcox fought harder in the second game, but Kreitz and Qin still pulled through in the end with the score of 17-14.

“They [Wilcox] are not as good as Lynbrook. We could have beaten them [Wilcox],” Kreitz said.

With these wins, there may still be hope for mixed doubles after the major setback of varsity mixed doubles 1, senior Mariya Pitel’s knee injury two weeks ago on March 21 against Monta Vista. Her injury ruined the hope of the pair, Kreitz and Pitel, to contribute wins to Paly.

However, Qin does not plan to continue playing mixed doubles this year, but instead intends to do girls’ doubles with sophomore Joanna Wu.

“I don’t feel that playing mixed improves my game since the mixed game is so fast,” Qin said. “Sometimes I’m in the front and I don’t know what I’m doing.”

On the other hand, Kreitz plans to stay with mixed doubles unless he manages to find a partner for boys’ doubles.

“I don’t want to split up any of the current pairs,” Kreitz said.

Mixed doubles and boys’ singles weren’t the only ones that contributed to the score. Girls’ doubles 2 team, freshmen Crystal Wang and Connie Yang won both games against Wilcox’s girls’ doubles 2.

Although Varsity may be slowly improving, JV managed to win against Wilcox with a dominating overall score of 13-2, avenging last time’s 6-9 loss. Many of the JV team’s games ended with dominating scores. JV girls’ singles 1 player, sophomore Kairen Wong’s game finished with 21-1 and junior singles 2, Blaine Lose, won 21-10.

Sophomore JV singles 1 player, Isaac Yao said, “We’re definitely improving."