Southern Section 4-A Badminton : Colton Doubles Up on Buena Park to Win Title

Before Tuesday’s Southern Section 4-A badminton championship, Buena Park Coach Claudine Casey decided her team’s only chance against top-ranked Colton would be to win the mixed doubles and girls’ doubles competition.

Less than 20 minutes into the match, however, Colton swept the opening mixed doubles matches, 3-0, and was on its way to an easy 14-5 victory over Buena Park at Walnut High School.

“We thought we could win two out of three in the mixed doubles,” Casey said. “And we loaded our strengths to the girls’ doubles.”

The devastating results in mixed doubles demoralized the Buena Park team and had a snowball effect on the match as Colton won the next seven matches to clinch the championship at 10-0, making the ensuing girls’ doubles matches meaningless.

Buena Park’s hopes to win two mixed doubles matches quickly disappeared, when their top two teams were swept. Heather Hassinger and Thyaset Nhan lost to Colton’s Joel Acevedo and Denise Gudmundson, 15-4, 15-10. Tonya Van Dervort and Paul Phan fared no better, losing to Derin Bororquez and Karla Hernandez, 15-11, 15-11.

In the third mixed doubles match, Colton’s Martin Flores and Donna MacDougall, the Southern Section champions, breezed to a 15-4, 15-0 victory over Chang Yi and Tu Le.

In addition to mixed doubles, Colton also swept the boys’ singles and girls’ singles and won three of four matches in girls’ doubles.

It was Colton’s second straight Southern Section badminton championship. Colton (19-0) has not lost a match in two seasons and won last year in the 3-A division. The Yellowjackets also had the Southern Section individual champions in boys’ singles (Flores) and mixed doubles (Flores-MacDougall) in addition to the runners-up in girls’ doubles (Gudmundson-MacDougall).

Another bad omen for Buena Park before the match was the ease with which Colton had defeated Garden Grove last Thursday, 15-4.

“We were hoping before the match that with some luck, we might win 10-9,” Casey said. “But everything would have had to go right for it to happen.”

Although the team champion had already been determined, Buena Park ended up winning five of the final nine matches.

Hassinger and Tu Le won both of their girls’ doubles matches, defeating Hernandez and Anna Gaitan, 13-15, 15-9, 15-6; and Van Dervort and Juhee Chin defeated Angela Gaitan and Hernandez, 15-9, 15-10.

Buena Park’s other victories were in boys’ doubles. Nhan and Yi defeated Herman Quintero and John Fontenot, 15-1, 17-14. In another match, Tran and Phan defeated Acevedo and Sandoval, 15-11, 12-15, 15-12.

Buena Park (19-1) was appearing in the final for the fifth time in the last seven seasons. The Coyotes last won the championship in 1983.