Badminton Tournament: The Results for Team 'Assari'... I Entered the Zone for the First Time
Hello,
this is Yasuda.
Last week, I wrote about how I started playing badminton again and the process leading up to entering the tournament.
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Please take a look here.
Normally, badminton posts are for Thursdays, so it would have been October 3rd,
but I wanted to wrap things up nicely within September,
so I am uploading this today, September 29th, at the end of the month.
This time, I will tell you the full story of Team 'Assari's' tournament.
It will be a long one, but please stick with me until the end.
Now, let's Love-All-Play, start!
In the first round, our women's trio dominated and won with ease.
Men's doubles,
women's doubles,
mixed doubles.
We won all three matches in straight sets,
getting off to a winning start.
The trio of female classmates was just too strong.
'Dynamic,' 'Iron-clad,' 'Stable'—
a women's trio that has it all.
They were
unrivaledto the point where I felt sorry for our opponents.
When I asked them about it,
they said they weren't even going all out yet... There were monsters right next to me, haha.
'About the time the girls I scouted for the badminton tournament were as strong as monsters and the guys had nothing to do.'
That sounds like a light novel title.
In the second round, we managed to win despite me getting a leg cramp.
The opponents were actually a team we knew,
which made it difficult since we both knew each other's strategies...
I, Yasuda, was playing in the men's doubles,
and I was hit with the mishap of getting a cramp in my right legmid-match.
Back then, I used to get leg cramps often.
I thought, 'It would be bad if my opponent realized,' so I kept a calm face while
playing, but
I ended up losing anyway...
The women's doubles and mixed doubles
held things down perfectly,
and we secured 1st place in the league
to advance to the final tournament.
Thank you, everyone!
The 1st place teams from the league advanced to the final tournament.
The three 1st-place teams
decided our tournament opponents through rock-paper-scissors.
Team 'Assari'
luckily secured a seed in the first round,
which effectively guaranteed us at least 2nd place.
Getting a seed is incredibly lucky.
Not only do you have fewer matches,
but you can also gauge the skill level of your next opponent.
We all gave a round of applause to the woman
who won the seed through rock-paper-scissors.
And as we watched the 3rd-place match,
・
・
・
Both sides are monsters...
There's no way we can win against whoever comes up from this...
This is an impossible game...
Ah... thisis checkmatemood
started to drift toward Team 'Assari'.
Who was the one who said
getting a seed was lucky? (It was me.)
And the lineup for the final battle was:
Men's doubles: S-kun and N-kun
Women's doubles: A-ko and B-ko
Mixed doubles: C-ko and Yasuda
That was how it was decided.
This lineup would go on to plunge Yasuda
into the depths of nervousness.
Entering the zone, what I grasped after a fierce battle was...
Yasuda, a kid who is notoriously weak under pressure,
watched the 3rd-place match
and was completely disheartened.
The final match began with two games running simultaneously.
First, the men's and women's doubles started.
Yasuda cheering out loud
to distract himself from the nerves
The men's doubles team fought hard but lost by a narrow margin
The team gave them a warm round of applause
Well,
the women's doubles team was at a disadvantage in the first half
Yasuda's mixed doubles match
was about to begin
My heart felt like it was going to jump out of my chest from the nerves
By the time I finished warming up,
the women's doubles team hadpulled off a brilliant comeback win
One win, one loss
Oh, this... this is bad
I'm happy they won,
but the pressure of everything riding on the mixed doubles
is too much for Yasuda, who has the mental fortitude of tofu...
Stiff as a board,
I headed into the final match that would decide the championship
As expected, in the first half,
Yasuda got beaten to a pulp
Or rather, I was just self-destructing over and over
As a doubles strategy,
the shuttle is concentrated on the weaker player
Naturally, from the opponent's perspective,
Yasuda, the self-destructor, was the perfect target
I was targeted relentlessly,
and my mental state was starting to crumble
My teammates watching were in a somber mood,
but my partner
had not given up on winning
She kept telling me,
We can still do this!
Badminton is decided by 21 points
There is a half-time break when you reach 11 points
In the first set,
we went into the half-time break
trailing by about 11-6
When I was rehydrating with the team,
They're too strong!
Yasuda's getting crushed!
Mostly self-destructing, though,
they were all laughing
like that
For some reason, that scene
was strangely funny,
and even though we were losing,
I was laughing out loud too
From there, the tension suddenly faded away and
I returned to the court while still at a disadvantage
To sum it up,
in this match,
Yasuda's mixed doubles team pulled off a comeback victory
and won the championship!
I only clearly remember the result of the match,
but my memory of the actual gameplay is hazy
Looking back now,
I think I might have entered the 'Zone.'
From what I vaguely remember,
while we were losing 11-6,
I started to get in sync with C-ko,
I could see the opponent's movements,
my smashes and receives were landing,
and it felt like the opponents were falling apart
Where did the self-destructing Yasuda go?
Before I knew it, we had snatched the first set
with a comeback win,
and the second set ended easily
at around 21-11 before I realized it
Finally,
my teammates told me,
You were moving amazingly in the second half,
but I have almost no memory of it...
I only learned about the existence of the Zone
after looking it up following the tournament
After I kept saying things
that sounded like middle-school syndrome,
I never expected to actually awaken myself, lol
It's like the '
State of Self-Actualization' from The Prince of Tennis
I wish I could use it at will...
I'm really glad we were able to win
By the way, the monster girl trio
all won every single one of their matches, lol.
They're just too strong...
I haven't been able to enter the Zone since then,
but I wonder if I'll be able to enter it again if I play in another match
The yakiniku at the victory party after we won was the best
This is why badminton is so fun!
I'm going to keep playing
Thank you for sticking with me through this two-week story,
and for reading this long post to the very end.
Thank you.
Yasuda