Hi to all, Long time badminton player, new to this forum. Started out playing in the USA Junior program at the original Pasadena Badminton Club in So. calif back in 1972. Also played at Manhattan Beach badminton Club. Was Nationally ranked in the USA Juniors for about 8 years, went to UCLA on a partial Badminton Schlorship back in 1978-1981. Now I live in Albuquerque, NM and play 1-2 times a week. I am still a decent high "B", low "A" player, and we have quite a few good players in NM now, especially at the university. I am the Rep for HL Badminton here in NM....2 web sites for you to visit if you like this one is our local information page http://home.comcast.net/~dancast/locations.html this one is our equipment page http://www.hlbadminton.com/ Nice to be in the group, feel free to contact me if you are ever in Nm wand looking for a good place to play. Thanks, Dan
Welcome to BadmintonForum, Dan! Surprised to find Kwun article on shoes on your website I was like, HEY, this is familiar! -dave
Hi Dan, It's great to hear that you're promoting badminton over in New Mexico. I'm the current president for the UCLA Badminton Club and it'd be wonderful if you would be able to tell me more about your time at UCLA under this badminton team and scholarship you speak of. Currently, our program is run under the club sports program wherein we develop our own team for competition, but no where near the university recognition you had when you were here under that partial scholarship. Would you elaborate for me? It's such a joy to hear from past badminton Bruins. Jason Lee http://www.studentgroups.ucla.edu/UCLABadminton From what I understand, Denise Corlett, a UCLA Hall of Fame inductee was once on UCLA's badminton team back in the 70s, winning the Broderick Award for badminton. Definitely a force to reckon with.
Hi Jason, Hope you don't mind me replying to this e-mail address re: your Badminton Central reply to me, I wanted to send the attached article, one of the few I could find from when we played at UCLA Here is as much as I can remember about the UCLA program back in 1979-1981...first things first. Denise Corlett's was on the team and she was also in the junior program with me while we grew up playing. She is now a Volleyball All of us all the team started playing in the So. Calif. Junior program. Pasadena badminton Club and Manhattan Beach Badminton Club were the main places to play for all National Ranked Junior and Adult players. I came from the Pasadena Club. As Nationally ranked players ourselves in the Junior ranks, we were recruited by 3 major colleges in 1978/79/80...all offering partial scholarships and an edge to gain entry into school. UCLA, Stanford and Arizona State all offered us admission. Most of us chose UCLA since we lived in So. Calif, . We were under the AIAW classification at the time, not big enough to be under NCAA. Here were the members of the UCLA squad: Women: Denise Corlett, Carrie Theis, Tracey McDonald, Barbara Bidermann Lisa Robertson (also a Volleyball player) Men: Dan Castilleja, Gary Shelstad, Tony Alston, Chris Burr, Tom Urban, Doug Young, Raymond Yeung Coach was a man named Victor To, however he was a Coach in name only.Nice man, but we all had much more Badminton experience. We played against teams from Arizona State, Stanford, Cal State LA, Claremont ( Stan Hales, a former National Champion, Thomas Cup member, was the Dean at Claremont and they had a team. Stan is now President of Wooster College in Ohio). Since we had literally all the talent from the Junior National ranks, no one really came close to beating us. We enjoyed some of the privileges of being a student athlete on campus, but as a minor sport that was limited. We switched partners all the time, so at one time or another we were all National Champs in age brackets or at UCLA. Tony Alston was my doubles partner in Juniors, he went on to play on Thomas Cups. His mom and dad were past world champions, and his dad (Joe Alston) was the only badminton player ever to be featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated. 3/7/55. Our Coaches were people like Stan Hales, Chris Kinard (married to Utami Dewi-sister of Rudy Hartono), Gary Higgins, Wynn Rodgers, Kelly Tibbetts, Joe & Lois Alston.... http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/features/cover/2002/jinx/50s/# I'll be glad to swap e-mails and tell you more, I have to run at this moment. Enjoy the article attached, I am sure I can think of more to tell you. Thanks for the interest, Dan Dan Castilleja 505-620-7617 (cell) dancast@comcast.net
It is great to see that the more experienced players are into this discussion forum too. I'm sure we can learn a lot from you Dan! It would be nice to hear your comments on e.g. racquet development during 30 years (and equipment development in general), training methods and their development in your perspective, places to play back then and how they've changed during the time etc.
I am only 45, not that old...but when I started playing, we used wood racquets, Kawasaki and Sugiyama, both from Japan. Very high tech for the time (1971-1975. Had to keep them in wood presses, same as the old Stan Smith tennis racquets. Carlton just came out with their steel racquet, but not many people changed. Yonex then introduced the Yonex Carbonex 8 (I think it was 8), in day glo colors...green, orange, yellow, although they were a Carbon (for those of you that remember, YONEX used to be Yoneyama). We played at the Pasadena Badminton Club, renovated from a WWII national Guard Armory. Had 4 very nice courts, and upstairs indoors behind the courts they still had a pistol/rifle range they used for practice way back before we turned it into the badminton club. At that time (1975-1985), we had all the National Champions at the club. People like Jim Poole, Pat Armendariz, Gary Higgins, Bob Dickie, Chris Kinard, Mike Walker, Helen (Kelly) Tibbetts, Charles Coakley, Dave Ogata, Stan & Diane Hales...and past National and World Champions like Joe Alston, Lois Alston, Bill Winn. Up and comers like me, Tony Alston played at Pasadena as well. Manhattan Beach was the other club, and had a huge Junior program. Lots of fun...look forward to hearing from more of you. Best regards, Dan
You are only as old as you think you are . Thanks for the comments Dan - I'm 30 and remember playing with wooden racquets some 20+ years ago. String tension was something bit different than today... Badminton was really just a "backyard sport" in Finland until late 80's, when kid named Pontus Jäntti won the juniors European Championship. After that we've had quite a few good players (ok, not in the world top 10 but around top 30 - 40) and the sport has been growing steadily. The best thing that I've noticed lately is that the amount of places where you can play also badminton is growing: 15 - 20 years ago indoor places in Finland were built only for sports like volleyball, handball and floorball, but now they take badminton into account as well (height of the hall + badminton lines). I am hopefull that one of these days we can be as successfull in badminton as we are in e.g. motor sports. P.s. Pontus actually won the seniors (35+?) World title last year. That's his biggest accomplishment (maybe the biggest accomplishment for a finn in general in badminton?).
