Toutz Hopes Badminton Finale Is a Last Hurrah

Vicki Toutz couldn’t sleep the night before her Garden Grove High badminton team played Diamond Bar in Tuesday’s Southern Section Division I semifinals. The Argonauts won handily, 13-6.

Wednesday night, she surely tossed and turned as she pondered today’s championship match against Alhambra Keppel, the division’s top-seeded team and a perennial power.

But beyond the outcome, today’s match will be a memorable one for Toutz because it will be her last.

After spending the last 31 years at the helm of Garden Grove’s badminton program, Toutz is quitting, and this time she means it.

“She’s done this before,” assistant coach Prat Mallawong said, “but then she started announcing it to everyone, it finally started to sink in. We’re really going to miss her.”

As will the prep badminton community, which views Toutz as something of a pioneer.

When she took over the program at Garden Grove in 1968, badminton had been a girls-only sport. In 1980, Toutz made a proposal to the Southern Section Council that it make badminton a coed sport. The section agreed on a trial basis, using the Garden Grove League as an experiment.

It proved a success, and in the mid-1980s, badminton was played at more than 120 section schools. This season, the sport was played by 65 schools in two divisions.

Toutz also established the Southern California Badminton Assn. awards banquet, which will be held Tuesday at the Orange County Badminton Club, and the California State All-Star Badminton Championships, a match pitting players from Southern California against their counterparts from the north, June 6-7 at Balboa Park in San Diego. The banquet and all-star match began last year, and even in retirement, Toutz said she would remain involved with both.

At the Southern Section Individual Championships on May 16, section Commissioner Dean Crowley presented Toutz with an award of appreciation for her contributions to the game.

“The sport is definitely going to miss her,” said Diane Sweeney, badminton coach at Loara the last 13 years. “She is such an advocate. . . . I wish we had more like her. There is no one that does what she does for the sport.”

And that has been her goal all along, to bring badminton the respect and recognition she believes it deserves.

“I want to see the sport grow and not fall by the wayside,” Toutz said. “We are still in the shadow of being an easy backyard, picnic game. If people saw it played, they would see it requires strong athletic ability.”

Few know competitive badminton on the same level as Toutz, who has played professionally and coached U.S. teams that have participated in the 1986 World Championships, the ’92 Olympics in Barcelona and at the ’95 Uber Cup, which is badminton’s equivalent to tennis’ Davis Cup.

She got her start playing badminton at Long Beach City College, but gave up the sport after transferring to Long Beach State, which didn’t field a team.

Seven years later, on a bet, she returned to the game.

“A friend told me she bet another friend that I could beat [the other friend], even spotting her eight points,” Toutz said. “And of course, I won.”

That got her started playing in tournaments again, and by 1971 she was ranked second in the nation in women’s singles. She represented the U.S. in the Uber Cup in singles that year and again in 1982 in women’s doubles.

All the while, she taught physical education and coached girls’ sports at Garden Grove High, where she started in 1961. At the end of each school day, she drove to Manhattan Beach, where she worked two hours with a private coach on her badminton skills. She finally hung up her playing racket in 1981, turning her attention fully to coaching.

“When you coach, it’s like a family,” Toutz said. “You see the kids make the right choices, after making bad choices. That’s what it’s all about. I’m going to miss it. I know that.”

Garden Grove’s badminton program is well-supported by its former players, who flock to matches and help in any way they can--another testament to Toutz.

“It’s more than badminton. It’s a family thing,” said Mallawong , 26, who played for Toutz from 1986-90 and will take over the coaching duties next season. “They just keep coming back. She gives so much to them.”

Toutz has helped four of her Garden Grove players win section individual championships and another 11 to reach the individual final. She has also led the Argonauts to 14 of the last 18 Garden Grove League titles, four division final appearances and two division titles.

Today, they meet Keppel at 3 p.m. at the Orange County Badminton Club in search of their third section title.

“It would mean a great deal for us to win,” Thaosatien said. “Especially if we do it for Ms. Toutz.”

But come Friday, it will be only a memory for the coach. “I don’t keep trophies or pictures,” Toutz explained. “My memories are in my mind and in my heart. I let everything else go.”