Christoph Ram Yshmael S.

Trinidad
11 Strategy

Passion and Tensions

Badminton has not always been my sport, in fact, I never had any sport in which I was good or at
least decent in. I tried basketball but my arms were too weak to shoot a ball. I tried soccer but I
always ended up hurting myself at home. I tried golf, but after I hit a glass pitcher with a plastic
club, my parents never bought me one again when it broke. Badminton was originally my
cousin’s sport. To me, she was my idol, my model, the one that younger me will always try to
copy. One day, she left her racquet at the table and I played with it as if it was a sword. She got
angry with me and immediately took it away from me. Eventually, she got bored and got the idea
of asking me to play with her. Every weekend, her dad will teach me how to play badminton and
I eventually learned how to hit a shuttlecock at most three times in a row. One day after school,
my mom and I picked up my cousin at her training session and her friends asked me to play with
them. That’s when I eventually got hooked to badminton and I also started training. My first
formal badminton event was at a sports week activity at school in 4th grade in which I won 1st
place at doubles. The next year, I managed to pass the tryouts and join the varsity team for
badminton in my school. From there, the training sessions got harder under a different coach
hired by the school and that is where my skills as a player really started to develop. The days of
hard and rigorous training eventually paid off as I won a gold medal in Bulprisa. Needless to say,
I joined the following year but did not manage to get a place. The coming years eventually called
for me to stop training and I only played badminton casually until last year in which I resumed
my training. Ever since I learned about badminton, I started to see the benefits of my training
even outside the sport. I gained a fit body and I wasn’t as sickly as before. I also got myself a
pretty decent muscular strength that I always managed to use in my every day activities.
Badminton for me is something that allowed me to expand my horizons instead of being just a
bookworm at home and it helped me grow a lot holistically. For me, badminton is a blessing in
which I learned how to enjoy things, despite the hardships it may entail. Had it not been for
badminton, I probably would not have been who I am right now. Badminton shaped me into the
person I am now, and I know that there are still lessons inside the sport that will help me even
outside of it. Badminton is one of the best things that I learned that makes this life worth living.