After four straight trips to the state championship match, the Pasadena City College women's badminton team is yearning for a fifth final in a row, especially after losing last year to CCCAA champ to Fresno City College. The Lancers won the state crown in both 2017 and 2018 under head coach Jen Ho.
The Lancers are 2-0 after a 21-0 blanking over Compton on Friday at Hutto-Patterson Gymnasium. The Tartars were only able to bring three players despite the ladder having a minimum of six to have a complete match.
PCC downed East Los Angeles, 18-3, in the 2020 season opener on Feb. 21. Winners of five straight conference team titles, the Lancers winning streak in South Coast Conference matches is now at 49. Coach Ho has never lost in conference play as the last time Pasadena lost a South Coast match was the 2014 season finale. Ho's sparkling career record is 62-5, but last year's 9-3 mark was surprising. All three defeats came against Northern California teams, including two against De Anza.
This year, PCC will play non-conference matches v. De Anza on March 13 and April 1 and has added a contest against Skyline at PCC on March 30. In the wacky world of CCC badminton, the Orange Empire Conference, and more local SoCal non-conference opponents refuse to play the Lancers. In the early 2000s, the conferences regularly played against each other but in recent years PCC's schedule has been limited to playing against SCC opponents East LA, Compton and El Camino.
While the Lancers return six players from the '19 squad, Ho is excited about the additions of newcomers in Charisse Chow, from San Marino High, and Chit Thu, from Myanmar (formerly the country of Burma). Another freshman is Jessica Marquez (Sierra Vista High). Chow was a member of San Marino's CIF Division I co-ed badminton championship team last year. Chow is a junior national ranked player and in 2017 was a CIF mixed doubles finalist.
Chow played #1 doubles with letterman Huyen Diep and the two were dominating against ELAC, allowing just 12 total points against in two matches (21-4, 21-2 and 21-5, 21-1). Thu played #1 singles against the Huskies and recorded a 21-9, 21-7 victory over ELAC #1 player Amber Huang and a 21-10, 21-11 triumph over Jasmine De La Cruz. Sophomores Sophia Nguyen and Angie Li also won two singles matches while second-year player Nicole Ching and Marquez each won one match. The #2 doubles squad of sophomores Chau Lam and Basilicus Kintanar won a wild 23-25, 21-17, 21-15 contest v. ELAC's Huang and Amanda Seah, but lost to the duo of De La Cruz and Emily Liu (21-13, 19-21, 21-14).
"We lost our best player to graduation from last year, but Huyen, Sophia, Chau and Basilicus have both improved a lot," Ho said. "The additions of Charisse and Chit are huge because each are experienced players that will help us. I like our schedule because we are doing what we can to play as many different teams as possible. We will learn as the season progresses how good we really are. You never really know though until you play in the SoCal Final. It's the match that determines if you get to state and you find how good the players play under that type of pressure."
Ho added last year's state singles runner-up Xiaoming Yao as an assistant coach.