Smash Bash Spring 2009

I haven't been able to blog about anything for most of this month. I was a little busy as usual -- the highlight of this month was definitely Smash Bash 2009, a badminton tournament held during the spring time in Arizona. Me, and my partner, Parag, ended up winning the Open Men's Doubles Event!!! Hooooooray!! Well, I must admit, I had to cut down on all the tricks and just play straight and simple -- my partner is too good to take care of the rest. I just had to make sure I don't make any silly mistakes, so that I could be depended upon to do the simple things right. I've mentioned earlier that I bought a digital camera already -- and one of the reasons that I bought it so hastily was that I wanted to tape some of the badminton games I was involved in, so that I could constructively look at them at a later time -- I am really glad I got the Canon SX200. The video quality is amazing -- and I've uploaded the finals into youtube (www.youtube.com/nabeelrahman11). Thanks to a friend of mine, Krishna, for videotaping the finals! The finals are just one set, to 22 points, with the traditional scoring system.

Here's Part 1 of the finals:



and here's Part 2 of the finals:



Here are some of the pictures I've taken from the event:

SmashBash 2009

I only got as far as the semi-finals in the Men's Singles Half Court event, and I lost to Parag. Right now, he's just much better than me and it was a foregone conclusion that he'd take me out -- and it was just a matter of speculation as to how much of a fight Krishna could put up in the finals. Just for the record, I failed miserably, and Krishna fared a little better, but still, it was just too disappointingly easy for Parag. We need to pick our games up to whole new levels to compete against him during the next tournament. 

I fared miserablely in the Mixed Doubles event though. After the high of winning in the Tucson Smash Cats tournament, we were brought down back to earth the last two times. Once in Manhattan Beach, and again here. We just beat ourselves in the games that we lost. We definitely need to fare better, and I still think we were good enough to win the past two tournaments.