San Diego Mesa College’s badminton season has come to an end after a dominant, undefeated run that ended in the state championship. Mesa fell short 11-6 in the team score against De Anza College, making them repeat 32CA Badminton Champions. Mesa’s Yumi Nguyen, Christina Nguyen, and Trang Tran kept their matches close and gave Mesa a fighting chance.
Entering Thursday, the team score was tied at 3-3 after the first round of singles. Tran, Christina Ngyuen, and Chrystal Micu won their respective matches to keep it close between the teams. Multiple matches in the first round went to the third game in the best-of-three individual matches, with Tran winning hers in the third, the scores being 21-18, 13-21, and 21-18.
Christina Ngyuen won hers 27-25, 21-8 and Crystal Micu 21-19, 21-15.
After the first round of doubles, Mesa and De Anza split the first two games. Despite their best efforts, Mesa’s duo, Anna Heiner-Moeller and Christina Nguyen, lost the third doubles game to De Anza’s Karina Chow and Makayla Than 21-8 and 21-9.
The results of the doubles round ended up giving their opponents a narrow lead in the team scores. This also marked a momentum shift that led to the end of Mesa’s impressive season.
The De Anza Mountain Lions got the best of the Olympians in the second round of singles. They won four out of the five games that led to the final team scores. The win in the second round came courtesy of Christina Nguyen defeating Hayden Ky 21-16, 21-19.
Up until Thursday, the Women’s Badminton team went undefeated on a 8-0 run. They ended the season 8-1, and were crowned South Coast Conference Champions.
With a young core mostly consisting of freshmen talent, the team looks to return to the dominance they had reached this season and once again raise another banner at Mesa College next year.
