Despite the inclement weather caused by hurricane Joaquin, many badminton enthusiasts still traveled to NCSU for Raleigh Smash 2015, a three-day badminton tournament hosted by the NC State Badminton Club. 

The tournament ran from Friday, Oct. 2, to Sunday, Oct. 4. Taking place in the second floor of Carmichael Gym, with $2000 worth of prizes to be won for those willing to test their skills. The event had five different tournaments running at once, each for a different level of skill. The five skill levels were Open Level A, Open Level C, Collegiate, Combo 80+ and Combo 95+.

Open A was the advanced level of the tournament and was open to the public for anybody who wanted to participate. Open C was also open to the public but was a level down from Level A and meant for more amateur players or players who might lack confidence in their abilities. Collegiate level was limited to only college students but not limited to just NC State. 

Combo 80+ and Combo 95+ are a bit different. These levels of competition are meant for older players with the idea being that, if both of the player’s ages on the team were combined, it would be over 80 or over 95 depending on the level. 

Phren Ren, a junior studying textile brand management and marketing and Vice President of NC State’s Badminton Club said that the idea of organizing groups by age is very common in America, especially for badminton.  

Ren and President of the Badminton club Yiwen Luo, a graduate student studying bioinformatics, said they wanted to have the tournament broken up into multiple levels to make the tournament and the overall sport more accessible to a wide variety of players. 

“Just imagine if you are a new player and you want to try and participate in badminton but there is only one level that everyone goes in,” Ren said. “That wouldn’t be so fun or encouraging for people just starting. We want them to play amongst their level so that they can gain some confidence and share some skill based on that spectrum.”

The tournament brought players from all over the Raleigh as well as college students from a variety of different universities like Duke and UNC, as well as colleges from out of state such as Virginia Commonwealth University and the University of Tennessee. 

Luo said that the $2000 prize pool, split amongst the tournaments, played a big factor in attracting skillful players to the event when they otherwise might not have come.

Yusuke Yamazaki, the winner of the men’s tournament, said that he has been playing the sport for  years and that he has been playing with his badminton partner and fellow winner, Pushkar Phadke, for three years.

“I’m going to have a baby next month,” Yamazaki said. When asked what he was going to do with the $100 he won in the tournament, Yamazaki said, “that one hundred is going to my baby.”

Luo and Ren said that badminton is one of the fastest racket sports in the world with ridiculously fast badminton hits, referred to as smashes by the badminton community. This is actually where the tournament, Raleigh Smash 2015, got its name.  

The Guinness World Record for fastest badminton smash is 332 kilometers per hour or 206.3 miles per hour. Fu Haifeng, a Chinese Olympic badminton player, set the record on Jan. 1, 2005. Haifeng set the record during a match in the 2005 Sudirman Cup, a tournament that he would end up winning against Indonesia.  

While Raleigh Smash didn’t have any record-breaking smashes, the three-day event still showed off player’s athleticism. While watching the match, the birdie would fly through the air at speeds so fast that it would become difficult for the audience to track. During one match, the volley count reached over eighty. This means that the teams were able to hit the birdie, also known as a shuttlecock, back and forth over eighty times for just one point.

Luo said that the sport of badminton is more popular in Asian and European countries but that it has not yet reached the same level of popularity in America. 

Luo, himself, learned to play badminton while going to high school in China before coming to college at NC State. 

“We want to encourage NC State students to start playing badminton with this tournament,” Ren said. “It [badminton] is a good way to build relationships, teamwork and athletic skill.”