Agape 1 bags middle school badminton title

Article from Marianas Variety (mvariety.com)

AGAPE Christian School 1 clinched the middle school division championship of the PSS-NMBA Interscholastic Badminton League SY24-2 by defeating sibling team Agape Christian School 2, 3-0, on Saturday at the Gilbert C. Ada Gymnasium.

Providing ACS 1 with a head start was Elim Nga Lam, who beat ACS 2’s Angel Enchu Hu in the girls singles event.

Lam controlled both sets as she was superior in every way. Thanks to her serves and powerful smashes, her lead grew larger. Hu stood her ground and capitalized on her opponent’s errors to gain points, but it wasn’t enough, and she ultimately fell short, 13-21.

The second set firmly secured ACS 1’s victory, with Lam dominating Hu and leaving her little room to maneuver, en route to a commanding 21-11 win.

Providing another win to ACS 1 was Tom Zixu Chen who bested ACS 2’s Lucas Zhichen Yang in two sets.

In the first set, Yang played well and gained the lead in the early portion of the exchange. But Chen eventually gathered momentum to take over and clinch victory, 21-8.

The second set saw Yang delivering more offensive highlights, but Chen proved unstoppable, securing another victory and clinching the match, 21-12.

Adding the icing to ACS 1’s cake was the teamwork of Andy Huaen Chen and Benjamin Cai who triumphed over ACS 2’s Daniel Haozheng Huang and Scott Li in two sets, 21-16, 21-11.

There were still two events left, but ACS 2 decided not to continue playing as ACS 1 had already secured match victory and the championship with a total of 20 points.  ACS 2 came in second with 14 points while Grace Christian Academy finished third with eight points.

It is ACS 1’s second consecutive year as middle school champions.

“This was unexpected,” said ACS’ coach, Pastor Kok H. Pang.  “I think the team really benefitted from the coaches just like how every other school had training from a national player — that helped a lot,” he added.

He said what gave them a big advantage was having a gym and being able to practice almost every day.

“The other schools gave us a really good fight,” he said. “But we had all of these players and plenty of time to train. We thank PSS and NMBA for working very hard to make these events possible.”