Badminton passion

While I was going through some badminton news I ended up in the blog of Chau Yap, a badminton lover which is extremely passionate about this sport. One of his post rises a very important question for the badminton world, why this sport is not famous in The United States. This is something that I cannot understand. An Olympic sport being so underestimated. Schools such as North broward Preparatory School that are recognized by its sport curriculum not having this incredible game.

I am from Brazil, where badminton it is not a famous sport at all because is obfuscated by soccer. Great percentage of the population have no idea of the existence of this game but even with all these disadvantages I still continued loving badminton.

My love for badminton started not a long time ago, to be more precise five years ago when I was ten.  I always did many sports such as  soccer, swimming, and basketball but I never played that well. My passion for Badminton has it roots on Tennis.

During my summer vacation I would spend time in the house of my uncle and watch him play Tennis but I never had the motivation to start practicing it. Until my uncle offered my brother and I the opportunity to do a tennis class,  just to see if  we liked it. Not surprisingly we did like and we started practicing every Monday, Friday and during the weekends. After two years of training tennis I started to look for another sport to practice but I didn't want to practice a popular sports, I wanted unusual sport, something that no one plays.

In Brazil the school ends at 12:30 but in my school there was a program to stay until 4:00 during Wednesdays and Fridays. At this program we would do our homework and play badminton. This was my first interaction with this wonderful sport but I wanted more, so my brother and I volunteered to make a physical and practical test to gain a scholarship to play badminton for my school and guess what, we got in. It was the choice that I did. As everything in life nothing last forever and I started to study in an international school because my family was planning to move to United States. I spent three years at this school, studying really hard and preparing to an international competition (BEO) that my school was selected to be part.

Finally I moved to United States, a country where sports are extremely well recognized. I was dreaming big when I arrived here but my expectations started to get lower, lower, and lower when my family and I started to look for schools and they said that they did not have a badminton curriculum. I was really disappointed with these news.

Nowadays I am studying at North Broward Preparatory as the others schools do not offer a badminton curriculum but there is great percentage of chineses who are building a badminton of course with the help of  my brother and I. The club just started, it is almost three weeks old. We play every wednesdays, I know that is not a lot but it is what we can do for now. The object of this club is to make this sport famous and encourage the principals to make it an official sport of the school.

Probably next year I will go to another school so my brother and I are going to create a badminton club and luckily we can play with other schools.

Badminton is a wonderful sport with much to offer but it just need a chance.