First off, do colleges have Badminton teams like NCAA? If so, which schools have the best badminton teams? Are there any really good ones in California? I'm a high school student and want to continue Badminton my whole life and if there aren't any college badminton teams, I guess joining clubs/leagues would be cool too. Please help
Yes, I believe some of the best schools are in California: UCLA, U.C. Berkeley, and U.C. San Diego to name a few.
Hi kimchipride, I'm a student at UCSD, and badminton is very competitive on the collegiate level. UCLA, UCB, UCSD, and UCI are probably the best colleges in CA (sorry if I left anyone out). UCLA came in first in the socal league last year, UCSD are the nation collegiate champions, and UCI is becoming a powerhouse due to the influx of many junior national players (this year they beat UCSD and UCLA, almost making them #1 for certain). Berkeley is hosting the national collegiate championships this year, so many of us are gearing up for it. If you're interested in watching, its going to be held March 24-25 (more information at the Berkeley badminton website). However, one thing to note is that we are not in a NCAA league. We are essentially sports clubs that organizes games against each other and host a national tournament. However, I wouldn't worry about playing badminton in college, by the time you graduate high school, it should be even bigger.
Thanks for the posts guys. I wanted to go to UCLA anyways. I guess it'll be good for my education as well as getting better at badminton.
2007 National Collegiate Team Results: 1st place = UC Irvine 2nd place = UC Berkeley 3rd place = UC San Diego Congratulations to all the winners!!!
Yeah, we were playing together for fun to knock out some of the other teams for our two UCI MD pairs. Nick was already playing 2 events, MS & MXD and we already have two MD pairs playing for points. Too bad we were 6th seed because if we were 7th or 8th seed then we wouldn't have met our own teammates during the quarter finals and could have gone to semi-finals. Oh well, it doesn't matter much now since we won the team event.