Harvard Badminton Club

The Harvard Badminton Club has been around for many years. Unfortunately, we do not know the history of the club before the fall of 1994, when the entity that you see now was created. We do know that at that time, the HBC had already been recognized as an official club at Harvard and that the club president was Jonathan Wu. Furthermore, we know that the club had court time reserved every Friday evening and Sunday morning. If anyone out there has more information about the club prior to 1994, we would be thrilled to hear from you.

The season started slowly with only 3 new members showing up regularly: Barbara Whitlock, Jan, and Nishi Rajakarvna. David Wong came a little later in the fall. They concluded that there were people at Harvard who wanted to play badminton at the club but were discouraged when they came out to find no one else playing. So, they decided to get organized. The leadership of the club was taken over by the military junta of Sgt. David Wong and Gen. Barbara Whitlock in a dastardly but bloodless coup. The group decided that someone had to show up at the beginning of every practice. Barbara took on the task of calling potential players every Thursday night to persuade them to play. David started collecting a list of names and email addresses of everyone who showed up to play. Skirmishes with the basketball players for court space and time gradually became easier - a battle that would still go on today. The membership grew and the club emerged from the dark ages to go in directions previously undreamt of.

• David became the official "Keeper of the LIST." This list would become the e-mail list that would swell to over 150 names. The people on this list would receive regular notices about practice times and cancellations.
• The e-mail list was also used to distribute the Bad Bull - a bulletin of useful information, funny stories and the occasional work of fiction loosely based on real life. A lasting legacy from this work was the Legend of Nicolaj, a pseudo-profile of one of our early members.
• The social aspect of the group emerged early on as they started to patronize Charlie's Kitchen, among other establishments, after practice...setting the precedence for après-badminton food and drinks.

Satisfied that the club was now thriving, the group began to look beyond Harvard Square for signs of intelligent life. Many clubs were found in the metropolitan Boston area and a list of contacts was gradually assembled. This list would become instrumental in the reincarnation of the Massachusetts Badminton Association (nicknamed MadBadAss by Barbara). Barbara and David attended the first meeting, establishing a Harvard presence in the MBA. The aforementioned list also led to the beginning of badminton on the web, with updates sent to Stan Bischof's Badminton Page (no longer in existence).

• Harvard traveled to the Irish Club in Dorchester for the first inter-club badminton challenge, forming many strong friendships with the club. Unfortunately, the Irish club no longer exists. Undaunted, Harvard would go on to challenge other clubs such as the Duxbury Club, with the dream of forming a Boston Badminton League someday.
• Harvard discovered the joys of road trips while heading down to Philadelphia for the Mid-Atlantic Classic, the first tournament of the new era. The gang of Barbara, David, Gordon Strause, Sharon Grimberg, and Beno stayed at the Holiday Inn because it had a hot tub - which was never open when they got back from the tournament. After the tournament, they made a side trip to New York City for a beautiful Sunday afternoon. Unfortunately, their rental car was broken into and everything was stolen except for the badminton rackets and David's lucky towel. Undeterred, Harvard would go to every Mid-Atlantic Classic since then. Later that spring, an even larger group was dispatched to the Massachusetts Open Doubles Tournament at Smith College. Harvard also had stunning success at the MIT Club Tournament, where Carston Loesch came out of nowhere to upset all favorites on his way to win singles, doubles with David, and mixed doubles with Barbara. By this time, Harvard had built up a reputation for going to tournaments as a large and rowdy group.

The first Harvard Badminton T-shirts were produced, featuring an altered Harvard logo (ve-ry-fast instead of ve-ri-tas) on the front and a politically-correct picture of 3 players (1 woman, 1 right-handed guy, 1 left-handed guy) on the back.

• Undergraduates began showing up at the club again. A large group, including Peter Simon, Josh Nimmons, Antoine Dunn, Cindie Young, and Chris Wang, were suckered into attending the Southern Maine Open, where they stayed on a farm with Lisa Hodsdon's family. It was there that Yi Liu achieved his 2 minutes of fame when one of his matches was televised on the evening news, becoming the first HBC member to play badminton on TV.
• Tournaments became a regular feature, and Harvard was present at all the regional tournaments, including the Connecticut Open, the Boston Open, and the Massachusetts Championships.
• Harvard joined the USAB as a club. With participation in so many sanctioned tournaments and now a membership in the USAB, Harvard was well on its way toward respectability.
• Peter Simon was becoming a tournament junkie. He was also acquiring contacts with undergraduates from other schools, an action that would serve to be very useful in the future.
• Barbara Whitlock was unknowingly anointed Vice President of MassBad. With her added responsibilities, increased extra-badminton social obligations and graduate school work, she began considering giving up her presidential duties at HBC. Feeling that it was important to return control of the club to the undergraduates, she passed the torch to Peter Simon (still an undergraduate at the time) and Vinay Kashyap, a postdoc and the man responsible for the University of Chicago Badminton Club's current state of affairs (God help them!). David Wong attempted to remain in the background, but was eventually declared Dictator-for-Life (God help us).

Summer badminton was instituted for the first time at QRAC - Harvard was now playing year round! The lack of air conditioning and the incredibly humid conditions inspired Frank Yang to donate Icebert and Pitcherbert - respectively a cooler and pitcher for pop and Gatorade.

• Club dues were instituted - $5 per semester - to help with equipment maintenance as well as subsidize the supply or drinks
• HBC became a presence on the web, with the establishment of a comprehensive website that regularly drew over 4000 hits per month. An automated mailing list (badminton-list@hcs) was also established - the next evolution of the LIST started in 1994.
• In the fall, club practices were expanded to include Saturday mornings. In addition, weeknight play was added. In the beginning, "rough and tough" Tuesdays were initiated where players came to play full contact badminton - no quarter was given and none was expected. Thursday nights were set aside for undergraduates and beginners - a stepping stone that helped them become more comfortable playing in the club before being thrown to the lions that populated open practices.
• Social activities blossomed during the year. Frank Yang introduced Sunday Brunch (dim sum!). Other activities also took off, including movies and smoothie parties. A social committee was established to coordinate activities. Their e-mail traffic resulted in the formation of the 100+ e-mail group. Antoine Dunn's food credo: If it's not red meat, it's a vegetable! (Non est muscularis ruboris, est vegetablis) was adopted by the club.
• Peter introduced the word aiyo as a versatile expression of despair, frustration, exasperation, and eventually, any situation that needed comment. The origins of this word were uncertain. Two possible roots were the Spanish Ai and the Oriental Aiyaahh. Mostly, it came from Peter habit of being a noisy player who was prone to making all sorts of strange sounds while he played.
• Peter's contact with Hyo-Jin Kim at Smith College bore fruit as they made plans for an undergraduate tournament. However, they realized that an undergraduate network was needed to ensure sufficient entries at the tournament. So, they organized an Open tournament with a undergraduate component, thus giving birth to the New England Collegiate Cup, which was played as part of the 1997 Smith-Harvard Open. Harvard won the cup! A spin-off of this tournament was the development of the New England Badminton Site - initially a tool to publicize the tournament. This was the first tournament to make use of online registration. Grace Liu also celebrated her 19^th birthday at the tournament.
• Harvard was now tournament crazy. Members traveled to Sault Ste Marie, Ontario, Canada for the Soo Open over Thanksgiving weekend. Other tournaments included the Crystal City Open and the Cornell Open in upstate New York.
• New member, Ralph Watson, was so impressed by the club that he donated his time by designing 4 different posters promoting badminton at Harvard. Each poster featured the phrase Non est picnicum, indicating that badminton was not just a picnic game. Ralph's company then donated the resources to print 300 copies of each poster.
• New club T-shirts were produced and now sported the club motto (Badminton: Non est picnicum) on the front and a picture of shuttles ripping holes out of the words "Harvard Badminton" on the back. Vinay's alternate motto of crescat badminton vita excolatur did not find a wide audience.
• Buoyed by the success of Smith-Harvard, Harvard sponsored the New England Collegiate Challenge - a tournament only for undergraduates....and the kids from the Gut 'n Feathers Club. Unfortunately, UPenn prevailed over Harvard at this tournament. More importantly though, the club received funding from Harvard for the tournament.
• Harvard stormed the Massachusetts State Championships, where more state champions hailed from Harvard than any other club in the state!

Harvard started to get serious about improving. Andy Chong, former singles player for Malaysia and then the #1 US mixed doubles player, was brought in for a few formal coaching sessions over the summer.

• David introduced the singles and doubles ladders to the club. Despite much eye-rolling and a spotty record of updating the ladder results by Josh Nimmons and Antoine Dunn, as well as attempts to subvert the ladder by Vinay, Antoine and David, the ladders promoted friendly competition at the club.
• Harvard sent a team to the Boston Invitational Team Tournament and finished a respectable 6^th place out of 8 elite teams from New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts and Maine. On the team were: co-captains Alan Rintoul and Xiaojiang Chen, David Wong, Jagadeesh Yedetore, Barbara Whitlock, Phakakeow Reaugaumporn (aka Dorm), Napin Surakkhaka, Kritapone Dabbaransi (aka Ko), Victor Simwala, Vinay Kashyap, James Cheh, Karen Eggleston, Wenqing Zhao, Grace Liu, Daniel Bulli, and Yu-chin Chen.
• Training entered a new phase during the fall with Saturday and Sunday morning drills.
• The Smith-Harvard Open was held again with over 160 participants, where Harvard successfully defended the New England Collegiate Cup. Perhaps more importantly, there was now a lean, mean tournament committee, and the tournament ran very smoothly. Grace Liu celebrated her 20^th birthday at the tournament but issued notice that she would not celebrate her 21^st birthday at the following year's tournament.
• With the institution of club dues and proceeds from tournaments, Harvard Badminton Club was finally financially in the black! Grace Liu and Josh Nimmons established a bank account. It was decided that keeping accurate financial records was not one of David Wong's strong points.
• Weeknight play was cut back. Wednesday evenings were set aside for beginners and undergraduates - who had now become an important source for recruiting new members.
• Harvard continued to take long road trips, this time to the DC Open.
• Harvard sponsored a special demonstration, featuring Andy Chong and Ardy Wiranata, formerly of Indonesia and a previous holder of the #1 world singles rank.
• Harvard attended many tournaments during the season, including the Connecticut Open and the Southern Maine Open. This latter tournament generated some controversy as it conflicted with the Northeast Regional Collegiates. Harvard took a stance and protested the late announcement of the Collegiates - to no avail. To make things worse, the Northeast Regional tournament schedule for April, the expected time of our collegiate tournament, became extremely hectic, with everyone trying to schedule tournaments for the same weekends. It was initially decided to cancel our tournament out of frustration but support from schools such as Dartmouth and Albright led to a reversal of that decision. So, the 1999 New England Collegiate Challenge was hosted by Harvard on April 17. This time, the dominant group was Andy Chong's kids - a coalition called the North Shore Junior Badminton Association. UPenn came in second, with Harvard in third place. The National Collegiates were scheduled for the following weekend, but Harvard did not attend, mostly because of the distance involved and the exhaustion associated with hosting a tournament. However, the issue of tournament conflicts would not end there, as Harvard would once again take a stance and post an open letter to the badminton community.
• Harvard was involved in the 1999 Boston Open, both in terms of participation and organization. Harvard would play an important role in providing line judges for both the semi-finals and finals. The line judge seats turned out to be the best seats in the house for witnessing some amazing play by the Canadians, Russians, and local heavyweights.

When Cathy first assumed leadership of the HBC as a freshman, she was simultaneously the only officer and every officer, assuming responsibilities of the President, Treasurer, Secretary, Social Chair, and webmaster/e-mail manager. As a former 3-time State badminton singles contender, she was not satisfied with the status quo of the HBC and felt the need to satiate her thirst for competitive (as well as recreational) badminton; she immediately embarked on a mission to completely revamp the HBC, succeeding in carrying out the following accomplishments:

• Attracted the attention of over 150 students who all signed up and indicated interest in the HBC at the Fall 2004 activity fairs for freshmen and upperclassmen. Nearly 100 students were drawn to the HBC during the Fall 2005 activity fairs, and Fall 2006's activity fairs galvanized the interest of over 130 students!
• Formed the first-ever formal competitive men and women's badminton teams for the 2004-05 and 2005-06 school years. Cuts had to be made both years for the then maximum 25-person team. In 2006, when the Northeast Intercollegiate Badminton League (NIBL) increased the maximum number of team members allowed for each school, many cuts still had to be made!
• Enabled, for the first time in Harvard history, the HBC competitive team to participate in a formal, organized competitive badminton league, the Northeast Intercollegiate Badminton League, which is currently the closest thing to NCAA collegiate badminton. Harvard went 2-6 in its first year (2004-05), but were the undefeated champions of the 2005-06 Northeast Intercollegiate Badminton League at 8-0!
• Lobbied successfully with the Malkin Athletic Center in 2004-05 for more court space, increasing it from two to SIX courts! What a beautiful sight it was seeing badminton players on both Courts 1 AND 3!
• Introduced organization into the club by establishing the first-ever official Exectuive Board.
• Recruited three wonderful coaches for the competitive team: Vivian Tam, Jaggi Yedetore, and Hong Wang, all of whom are also awesome players!
• Overhauled the website by including new features such as member profiles, a picture gallery, a practice schedule, and an extensive club history.
• Created three snazzy HBC Shirts. The 2006-07 design can be seen on our T-shirt designs page.
• Hosted the Harvard Open Team Tournament (HOTT) with the help of great HBC veterans Daniel Bulli, Vinay Kashyap, Peter Simon, and Shengqian Wu.
• Fielded an HBC team that snatched 1^st place at the 2004 CNASA CUP/MITCSSA 2nd Annual Badminton Tournament.
• Organized regular team dinners at Uno's (now an HBC tradition) in Harvard Square and semester-end banquets to recognize each season (win or lose) of badminton!
• Obtained official locker space for the Harvard Badminton Club!
• Represented the HBC as club leader, team captain, NIBL liaison, competitive team player, and unofficial coach!
• Played badminton with former Harvard University President Larry Summers! President Summers unexpectedly stopped by during the first competitive team practice in Fall 2005 and couldn't resist the temptation to experience a little competitive badminton.
• Promoted the HBC by being featured in the President's Day special issue of Boston's Weekly Dig newspaper.
• Was contacted by The Discovery Channel to play badminton with cast member, Mikey, of the hit television show, "American Chopper" (hooray for badminton publicity)!
• Repaired and redefined the meaning of competitive badminton in the Harvard Gazette as a spread in the paper version and as a feature article available online: http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2006/11.16/07-badminton.html.
• Captained a Harvard-MIT team to compete against other badminton clubs in Massachusetts via the first-ever Massachusetts Badminton Association "B" Doubles League (http://geocities.com/mass_league)!