Birdies of a Feather : Asian Immigrants Help Make Keppel High’s Gym the Home of an Internationally Known 97-0 Badminton Team

Something thwacky is going on at Mark Keppel High School in Alhambra. The shuttlecock is muscling out the pigskin.

Thanks to an infusion of Asian immigrant students and the dedication of an ex-football coach, Keppel has been the top high school badminton team in America for the last five years with a 97-game winning streak.

The suburban high school, where two-thirds of the student body is of Asian descent, has become an international magnet for players. It is not unusual for Keppel to receive calls from parents in Hong Kong or Taiwan who are relocating their families and are more interested in the badminton team than academics.

As Asian immigrants remake the cultural and economic landscape of the San Gabriel Valley, their children are exerting enormous influence on badminton, which is wildly popular in Asian countries but dismissed by most Americans as a back-yard frolic rather than an Olympic sport. The students’ success is also breaking down the stereotype of Asians as studious non-athletes.

“Keppel is unique,” said Dean Schoppe, who played on the U.S. national badminton team and now develops junior players around the nation. “They get great talent and keep them for four years. They are so dominant.”

Originally a high society and teatime sport played by socialites in tuxedos, badminton became broadly popular in the 1920s after Hollywood stars embraced it.

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Players use a 3 1/2-ounce racquet and shuttlecock with 16 feathers set into a base of cork. Unlike in tennis, the badminton birdie must be kept in the air at all times, and points are scored when a player misses a shot or makes a mistake. The sport requires stamina, strategy and speed, with tournament-level players running the equivalent of four miles during a game as they lunge and sprint after the shuttlecock, or birdie, which can reach speeds of 200 m.p.h.

“Some people think badminton isn’t a manly sport like football, but it is more competitive, and it takes hard work, fast moves and real good concentration,” said Sandy Tirtadjaja, 17, a senior from Indonesia and one of Keppel’s top players, who will compete today as Keppel plays its first game of the 1995 season against Pasadena Polytechnic School.

Keppel’s dominance owes a lot to coach Harold George, 47, who has wheedled, chewed out and egged on his mostly immigrant players for more than a decade.

The dynasty has solidified as George’s students encouraged their younger brothers and sisters to go out for badminton when they reached high school. Badminton playoffs go no further than the California Interscholastic Federation’s Southern Section, but Keppel is continually regarded as the top U.S. high school team, according to a national consensus of coaches and experts.

When George began coaching in 1980, only 30 students tried out for badminton and the team had not won a game in four years. Today, about 120 students vie for 12 positions each in varsity and junior varsity plus a handful of alternates.

“We let them fight it out,” George said, watching a practice from the bleachers one afternoon.

On the gymnasium floor below, 40 students dressed in shorts and T-shirts swat birdies across the net. Sometimes the volley continues for minutes on end, punctuated by a regular thwack, thwack of the bird, the screech of rubber-soled shoes against waxed floors and an occasional grunt of exertion.

Suddenly, George breaks off in mid-sentence, stands up and bellows at a student.

“Song!” he calls out. “I want to see the racket up to net height and I want to see good feet.”

Sitting down, George points out a former Hong Kong champ, Alvin Wong, who is now attending college in the United States and is on the floor coaching students. Wong heard about Keppel’s prowess and began dropping by because he wanted to practice against strong players. Eventually, he volunteered to help.

On this afternoon, as Keppel students crowd around respectfully, Wong demonstrates the drop technique, explaining how to avoid telegraphing your strategy.

“This is how we get the club effect here at a public high school, with all these alumni and great young players coming to help me coach,” George said.

The coach himself has never played professional badminton or even tournaments. “Any time any of our JV kids want to boost their egos, they just play me,” he joked.

At Keppel, George eventually became the head football coach and did badminton on the side. But two things happened. His son started playing football at San Marino High and George wanted to be free on Friday nights to cheer him. And Keppel’s student body started changing rapidly, reflecting the San Gabriel Valley’s Asian influx.

“I could see we weren’t going to have a lot of big husky athletes to play football anymore, but I also could see we were going to have fast, quick, intelligent athletes who could play badminton,” George said. “I thought it would be a great challenge to work with these youngsters.”

George says the transition to badminton required a change of tactics. Gone is the loud emotional buildup of players. “In badminton, if you get too emotionally psyched up, you seize up on the court.”

There is also a sensitivity to Asian tradition and culture: “With these kids, everything has to be subtle. I don’t criticize them in loud tones. They’re already driven to do well so we just have to let them know what’s expected of them.”

George has also developed exercises with an Eastern twist. Before tournaments, he peels off red dots and plasters them on his players’ shoes and wrists as psychological reminders to concentrate on beating their opponent. He also makes them run three miles a day and do hundreds of sit-ups and pushups off season.

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Many of George’s students, whose parents work long hours, are struggling to adjust to a new country, language and culture. For them, the all-Asian badminton team provides an instant family, one whose warmth and cohesion far outstrips the camaraderie of a usual sports team.

One afternoon, former player Lisa Wang, now 22 and a flight attendant, dropped by, bringing a Vietnamese snack for George--the kind they used to eat after tournaments.

“It’s like coming back to visit relatives,” Wang said.

This year, George expects stiff competition from high schools in Rowland Heights and Diamond Bar--two other areas where many Asian immigrants have settled. But he says success lies in enlisting talented ninth-grade girls--far harder to find than boys--and developing their skills over four years. Annie Tran, 17, his best female player this year, is an example. Her two older sisters also played for George; one was a U.S. junior national champion.

Badminton, according to its advocates, is the second-most-popular participatory sport in the world, behind soccer. In Asia, top badminton players make millions of dollars in professional tournaments broadcast over national TV.

Badminton experts say Asian immigrants have given an important boost to the sport in California schools and that scores of private new ethnic clubs have sprung up to meet the demand. But Keppel remains the epicenter of the high school badminton scene.

Avid badminton players Calvin and Frances Ho, who emigrated from Hong Kong, persuaded their parents to sell their first house in Monterey Park and move to Alhambra so they could play badminton at Keppel.

Although Calvin, now 20, has graduated, Frances, 17, is playing her last season at Keppel.

Badminton “has helped me a lot,” she said. “It makes me stronger mentally.”

Schoppe says that when he visits Taiwan and Hong Kong nowadays a lot of people want to ask him about Keppel and George.

“They’ll have heard they’re the best badminton program in the U.S.,” he said. “Now, when families are going to move to the area and their kids play badminton, one of the considerations is to make sure they’re in the jurisdiction of his school.”