Bruin Open

Bruin Open is a badminton tournament organised by UCLA. It is held every year in the last week of October. So, what is Bruin Open to me? I am an avid badminton player....maybe avid is not the right word. I am actually a competitive badminton player (only at club level) who participates in quite a number of tournaments around the state of CA in a year.

Bruin Open marks the beginning of a great partnership that was formed 2 years ago with my badminton women doubles partner, Saroja. It was just 2 months after I gave birth to Zoey and Saroja approached me for the first time to see if I was interested in taking part in this tournament. This is not my first tournament as I have already taken part in a few with Chris, playing mixed doubles but it is my first women doubles tournament. I have always preferred to play womens' doubles as I felt that in mixed doubles, usually, the guy will dictate the game and I preferred to play a more active role in contributing to the game. Therefore, without thinking too much of my fitness or rather lack of fitness and preparation for this tournament, I said "yes" to Saroja. The rest, like we say....is history.

We never expected our first tournament to be such a success. We actually came back with a medal, 2nd place in the D category. Okla....although it's the lowest category but hey, you have to start somewhere right? Hehe.....moreover, I have not lifted the racket for 9 months and am much overweight and not able to move very well around the court. Despite all that, thankfully, my partner made up for all of my "temporary" disability with her lightning fast movement and good defense. I remembered in between the matches, I had to pump milk as I was still breastfeeding Zoey! Haha.....thinking back on this makes me smile! That's because when friends ask me what is that I'm carrying, I'll sheepily say, "It's a pump!" Well, you know la, Asians are still quite embarassed talking about these things.

Anyways......this is the list of tournaments that we won up to date!

Year 2005

Bruin Open - 2nd place in DWD

Year 2006

SunGod - 1st place in DWD and semi-finals in CWD

We missed out on the Dave Freeman tournament as I had to go back to Malaysia.

CalState Games - semifinals for CWD. We had a walkover as I twisted my ankle in the quarter final match but hey, we still won the match with us playing the mixed formation.

Bruin Open - didn't win any medal here. Didn't play too well in this tournament.

Bay Area Open Fall - 1st place DWD and Semifinals for CWD. Yeah, we actually flew up to San Jose to play this tournament.

Year 2007

Bay Area Open Spring - 1st place CWD and Consolation BWD. This was a pretty successfult outing as in the BWD, we beat some of the players that we thought were better than us! Quite a confident booster!

UC Davis Open - 2nd place CWD and quarter final in BWD. This was a good outing too coz' we had really tough matches and we won it mostly in 3 sets. And the highlight was in the semifinal match where we lost the first set and we were down 10-17 and we made a comback and win the 2nd and 3rd set. Another confident booster! Oh, did I mentioned that we had to play against each other in the singles cateogry at the semifinal stage? Yup....it was so weird!

CalState - 2nd place BWD and 1st/2nd CWD. NO twisted ankle this time!

SGVBC Open - 1st place DWD. This was the first tournament that we won prize money. $50 and an Armotec 250 racket each! Wow....we're on our way to being a professional player.

Bruin Open - which will be held in 3 weeks time. Probably our last tourney for quite some time. I'll let you know about the outcome next time.

That summarizes our 2 years of partnership. I must say, we are one of the few successful partnership, as far as our club is concern. We learn from each other and keep improving and the best part is we have the same philosophy, that is to "Have fun" while competing but at the same time, strong determination to win every match! We adopt the "never say die attitude" and another strong point of our partnership, is we both are very strong mentally and that is very important in competitive sports!

So, here's to 2 years of great partnership and more medals to come!

~~~~It's not the size of the dog in the fight, but the size of the fight in the dog. -Archie Griffen~~~~