Southern Section 4-A Badminton : Garden Grove Wins One at a Time : Players Plan for Individual Matches After Team Victory

Some Garden Grove badminton players could have been excused for looking beyond their Southern Section 4-A semifinal match with Buena Park on Thursday. Five Argonauts have semifinal matches in the Southern Section individual badminton championships today at Cal State Dominguez Hills.

But they kept their minds on the present, and top-seeded Garden Grove pulled out an 11-8 victory to qualify for the team final May 15 at Huntington Beach High School.

“Now they are thinking about it (the matches today), they knew what they had to do today and they did it,” Garden Grove Coach Vicki Toutz said.

Now, Garden Grove seniors Canh Nguyen, Peter Lee and Thuan Quach and juniors Tracy Hudson and Thuy Nguyen can concentrate on the individual championships. Hudson and Nguyen are in familiar positions.

They met in the finals last year and today are in separate semifinal matches. Thuy will team with her older brother, Canh, in mixed doubles and Canh will compete in the boys’ semifinals. Lee and Quach will be in the boys’ doubles.

Hudson and Nguyen dominated the girls’ singles matches against Buena Park’s Heather Hassinger and Tonya VanDervort in all four best-of-three-set matches. Nguyen was especially strong winning her two singles matches in straight sets of 11-0, 11-1 and 11-2, 11-1.

But the fourth-seeded Coyotes were strong in girls’ doubles and going into the final three matches the score was tied, 8-8. Only the No. 2 girls’ doubles team of Toni Aguilar and Dao Diep could win a set as the Buena Park’s Michelle Rhee and Julie Miyahara and Martha Espinoza and Tu Le swept all four matches.

But Toutz was not worried. “We knew that we had the ace in the hole,” she said. “Our mixed doubles teams are very strong.”

The Nguyen brother/sister team clinched the victory defeating Gerardo Meza and Tu Le, 15-5, 15-7 after Peter Lee and Ha Nguyen beat Thyaset Nahn and Hassinger for the Argonauts’ ninth point. Hudson and Quach finished the Garden Grove mixed-doubles sweep defeating Vu Trinh and VanDervort, 15-11, 15-5.