I almost didn’t organize another Becky Cup this year because it’s a bit of a pain and it comes right as my classes are ending so I’m super busy. But I got a lot of requests starting months ago, and who am I to disappoint? I also love my birthday and I really can’t think of any other way I’d rather celebrate besides playing badminton with my friends.
So I did and it was super fun! I had the maximum number of participants (32) and while it was a doubles tournament, everyone played individually. There is a badminton app in Chinese in which you have groups of 5-8 people and every game different people play with different partners. So by the end you have played with everyone in the group as your partner and everyone has played every game. It’s a more fun game when the group has a mixed level because the weakest player isn’t kicked out immediately and the strongest players are offset by the weaker ones when they have to team up. The app calculates the winners based on the scores.
I had people from all my different groups: the foreigner group, the gay group, my club and a few new friends who were friends of friends. Everyone got a shirt with the theme “the answer to life, the universe and everything” (as it was my 42nd birthday) and the shirts had my dragon badminton logo as well.
I won’t wax poetic about how fun and meaningful it was to me, I’ll just show you the pictures. A group called Plan-X came and took pictures for free so a big thanks to them for many of the pictures.
Don’t the shirts look good? I’m not a fan of fluorescent color but I knew it would look good on a big group and I was right!
Before the competition I made everyone watch the “progression” video I made.
Birthday girl! Because I was the only one everyone knew I was hectic and distracted the whole time (if anyone had a question they all asked me). I had to do everything in 2 languages too.
I only prepared 4 prizes for 4 groups so participation was capped at 32 and we had 32!
Plan-X also went around and interviewed everyone including my coach!
Using the app was a much better idea. Each group had a “leader” who was responsible for adding the points of each game and telling the group who was next to play.
Even a few of my non-badminton friends came and cheered us on! My friend Caycie made us all cookies so even if you didn’t get medal, you still walked away with some homemade American M&M cookies. Everyone was a winner!
The medals. Each group had a 1st, 2nd and 3rd place medal. The medals had dragons around them and I got rainbow ribbon as a little nod to gay rights.
After the games were done (took the full two hours) we had the medal ceremony.
I gave the medals and took pictures with each group. As for me, I was 4th in my group, just missed a medal, but I’m thinking it’s better I don’t win. Isn’t it a little tacky to give myself a medal? Although I made an entire competition around me, so maybe a little more tacky isn’t noticeable. 😉
The cool thing wasn’t only that it was my friends playing but also how international the group was. We had Chinese, American, Indonesian, Fillipino, Malaysian, Taiwanese and Czech!
I went home exhausted that night but couldn’t fall asleep. I feel so lucky and happy to have found badminton and have so many friends that support my crazy ideas. So here is to finding badminton in your 40’s and here’s to 42 more years!
Hey Becky, such an inspiration. Just out of curiosity, what is the name of the app that you use for the competition? I run a social club in Melbourne and anything to make life easier in organising a competition is a welcome. Thanks.
It’s called 中羽联 and it’s a great app. Only problem is it is only in Chinese and all the players need wechat to sign up and see the scores. (Only the person that sets up the game needs the app, everyone else accesses it through wechat.) So it’s hard to use outside china.