The Skyline women’s Badminton team will begin pre-conference play this weekend tournament on March 17 and will begin Conference play on March 20.

This upcoming season, the Coast Conference that Skyline is in, went down from facing four teams to three teams: San Francisco City Community College, Fresno Community College and De Anza College. This season is going to consist of nine matches—singles or doubles—and four different tournaments.

In each single’s match, players are ranked 1-6 based on their ability and the order in which they would play each other. For example Skyline’s number 1 player against opponent’s number 2 player and then Skyline’s number 2 player and the opponent’s number 1 player and so forth until all six players from each team has played.

All individual matches are best of 3 with each match played until 21 points are scored by an individual. All singles matches are worth 1 team match point.

The doubles match were two players from each team plays each other. There are a total of three doubles matches. They are also worth one team point while all other doubles matches are worth two team match points and the first team to 11 points wins with 21 possible points in the match. All remaining matches after one team has 11 points are still played out.

Last year, the badminton team tied for third in the Coast conference. When asked how this year’s team would try to get build on that and attempt to get to first place this year, Head Coach Jan Fosberg explained her goals for this season.

“It is not how we can get from third to first,” Fosberg said. “We have to look at our personal and we will short-term goals and try to improve upon our skills that is our overall team goal for the year.”

When asked how she feels about the team’s adjustment and their readiness to play Angelica Completo, a first-year player, expressed what the team could work on to turn out on top.

“I feel like we are ready,” Completo said. “But we need more practice. We need more work in communicating when we are playing doubles.”

Denise Trinh, a second-year player, talked about the team’s ability to adapt to new members of the team.

“We have a lot of new players, so we are learning the game at different skill level,” Trinh said.

Also, Trinh likes using the smashing serve because it’s fun. She also said that she likes to use a hit that they are not prepared for. Trinh said that the key for the team to get better is to work hard together and never give up in the middle of a game. She called the game of badminton as more of a mental sport than physical.

“As long as you’re determined to win, even though you don’t have a lot of skills, you can still win,” Trinh said.