SOUTHERN SECTION BADMINTON PLAYOFFS : Buena Park Holds Off Garden Grove for Title

Garden Grove High School made Buena Park sweat right up to the last game of the last match of the Southern Section 4-A badminton final. But Buena Park took the final game to win the championship, 10-9, at Cypress College.

The Buena Park players on the bench cheered as if they had already won the championship when, with the score tied at 9-9, their best boys’ doubles team of Eric Chin and Anh Le were playing in the last match of the meet against Garden Grove’s second team of Sung Chang and Spencer Kim.

Chin and Le dominated the first game, 15-4, but Chang and Kim shocked the Coyotes in the second game, winning, 15-3.

Chin and Le’s teammates finally rushed the court to celebrate after they won the third and deciding game, 15-10.

But when Buena Park Coach Michelle Tafoya was asked what matches she thought were most important, Chin’s and Le’s final doubles victory was not the first to come to mind. Tafoya said that the key victory was Scott Lee’s victory over Sung Choi. “We had to win that one,” Tafoya said.

Lee dropped the first game, 12-15. By the time he had beaten Choi, 15-12, in the second game, matches that had started at the same time were long since over. Lee was frustrated in the third match, several times pounding his fist into the floor after losing points to Choi but finally ended the marathon match, 17-15.

Chin’s and Le’s doubles victory and Lee’s key singles win may have been meaningless if it hadn’t been for earlier victories by Buena Park’s Noy Sundara, the Southern Section 4-A division girls’ singles champion.

Sundara won both of her singles matches, beating Ly Huynh, 11-1, 11-2, and Hanh Vu, 11-1, 11-4. Sundara, along with doubles partner Sandy Chun, beat Nicole Nguyen and Thao Vo, 11-15, 15-2, 15-4, and Xuan Nguyen and Dao Pham, 15-3, 15-0.