JVC develops champion smashers

Members of DLSU Ladies Badminton Team Champion, 2004 JVC Inter-Collegiate Badminton Championships

Badminton has existed for many generations. It gained popularity as a social pastime in earlier years but it became known as a competitive sport rapidly worldwide in the early 20th century. It’s one of those sports where the sun won’t give you a tan because it’s played indoors but you will definitely lose some flab from all the moving and sweating.

Badminton became popular in the Philippines a few years back and is growing at a fast rate, not only in the number of fanatics playing the sport, but also in the number of badminton courts being built in the Philippines.

With the rising number of badminton fanatics came the rising number of badminton tournaments. For the past few years, badminton tournaments have been organized almost every weekend. It may be a company tournament, fun tournament, alumni fund raising tournament, a club tournament or a big prestigious tournament like the JVC Badminton tournament.

The JVC Badminton tournament started in 2001 with the JVC Open Badminton Championship. JVC (a company not in any way related to badminton) started this big and prestigious event in the country with the intention of spreading the popularity of the sport all over the Philippines and helping the athletes gain exposure in the sport they love the most. And as years pass, there are many new faces in every tournament. This is clear evidence that the JVC tournament is indeed successful.

In November, JVC will prove that it has the most prestigious and widest covered badminton tournament when the JVC Inter-Scholastic Badminton Championships (heard high school teams are already included this year!) begins its second year.

The JVC Inter-Collegiate 2004 was a great experience and exposure for us and the De La Salle University team. It gave us a glimpse of the players from the different colleges and universities in Metro Manila. For us, this tournament was like a tune-up game for our team because most of the universities that we competed against in the UAAP were also the universities that joined the JVC Inter-Collegiate. This prepped us and gave us a chance to play and also compete with the different universities not included in the UAAP. We didn’t just battle it out with the best players in the badminton courts, we also got the feel of having a tournament played inside a mall, which was at the Glorietta Activity Center.

And for us, the DLSU varsity players, joining this tournament again will give us a chance to defend our title in the women’s division, which we bagged last year. Yahoo La Salle!

Last year, our coach and the team decided to join because we were confident that we had a strong team. We really prepared for the tournament. We focused on our daily practices, where we did physical exercises, court drills and weights and balanced our studies with these as well. We also got a chance to go out to the malls and which gave us a chance to bond with one another. What we always remember Coach Owen Lopez saying was, "OK lang magtawanan at lokohan sa labas ng court, pero pagdating sa loob dapat seryoso."

During the competition, we felt nervous and at the same time we were excited to meet our opponents. We were aware that accidents happen, just like what happened in one of our UAAP games, where we didn’t expect that two of our top players were not able to play for the whole season.

It was really great to know that all the hard work that we put into our training paid off and yielded positive results. We are proud of carrying the name of the school that we represent, which is DLSU. It felt good to be on top, especially when we were being awarded, because all eyes were on us, pictures were being taken, and the games were being recorded and would be televised.

What we like about the JVC Inter-Collegiate tournament is that it caters to collegiate level teams. It is one of the few tournaments that cater to this level. It gave a chance for the players in the collegiate and university levels to be known and show their potential in the sport. And of course the prizes (which we didn’t expect) were big. Imagine, the whole DLSU Ladies team were each given tickets to go to Boracay, Samsung cellular phones, Rudy Project sunglasses, JVC digital cameras, cash prizes and other giveaways. JVC is very generous.

The JVC Inter-Collegiate tournament taught our team about the importance of teamwork. Each game is crucial and important. Focusing on the game is very important and every win means that we are one step closer to getting the title. We learned to support each other during the game, yet we were aware that winning and losing are all part of the game – we just have to do and give our best while we aim for the top.

We are very thankful to JVC for conducting such a great inter-collegiate tournament. We enjoyed taking part in the tournament, because it gave us a lot of experience and exposure. We are looking forward to the next one, and we are definitely joining the one in November. Watch out for this year’s JVC 2005 Inter-Collegiate Badminton Championship where the best badminton players in the top colleges and universities battle it out in the court for the champion’s title.

We encourage others to try out the sport.

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Registration for the JVC Interscholastic Badminton Championships is ongoing. It is open to all high school and collegiate teams. For more information, visit www.jvcbadminton.com or call 0917-8050702 or 0917-5288970.