Today, I went to UofT's intramural tournament. The tournament was for students from all three campuses to have a chance to compete with each other. My partner could not make it, so I just went there to cheer for my team. I brought my badminton gears in case there were any teammates required someone to warm up with. I put my bag on to the floor next to a bench. When I was chit-chatting with my friends and watching the games, I noticed there was some guy lying on the floor with my bag UNDER his back! I immediately walked to him, said to him nicely "excuse me", then pulled my bag away. I pretended to be nice and didn't want to take him personally, so I pretended that I needed to get something from the bag. Since the side of the court was so crowded with everyone's stuffs, I could only place my bag two feet away. I thought the problem was solved so I went back to my friends. After awhile, when I looked at my stuffs, I saw that guy's head was on top of my bag and he treated it as a pillow! This time, I was pissed and I walked up to him as he stood up. I said "Excuse me, whats wrong with you? you keep treating my bag as your pillow?" He said "oh I was just sleeping on my bag, not yours." He was right, half of his head was lying on top of his bag, and another half was lying on top of mine! I pointed out to the "head-shape" that was compressed into my bag and questioned him. I said "It was the second time I saw you doing that! If you break anything, you have to pay for it". In my bag there were my racquets, one of them took me one month to specially order it from US, another one was just bought and used for less than two weeks! He said I was rude and didn't respect him, and said I could have just point it out. He made it sounded as if I was doing anything else instead of just using my words to talk to him! He meant it was my fault that I didn't point out it was wrong to sit/sleep onto someone else's stuffs? If I pointed it out in the first place, he would say that I was rude anyway! He didn't show mutual respect to other people and their stuffs, slept on them without asking the permission of others and now he said I didn't respect him.. I didn't see the point to respect him, but I was only by myself, they had two guys.. I didn't want to get my friends and teammates involved in it and ruined the whole tournament, so I just said "don't do it again!" and walked away. May be I was kind of angry at that point, but I've tried my best to control myself, I didn't even say things in loud voice or said something rude! Honestly I didn't know how to deal with this kind of situation, since I've been meeting nice guys along over the 2-3 years of badminton playing, and I thought all badminton players were nice and respect the others.. Have any of you guys experienced this kind of situation before? How would you deal with it?
That guy was just a jerk in that situation, there is an unwritten rule that you don't mess with somebody elses stuff unless a) they ask you too or b) you are making sure that something like that happens to it. Just ignore him, he was being blah. Also don't let it get to you, the badminton community is great, but even the greatest things have some bad in them.
Thats why I chose to swallow the "bad apple" by myself instead of affecting the moods of other people... one thing that made me felt better was that my friends kicked their bottoms for me by winning a game against them =)
What a rude person...I would like the know the results when you literally used his bag as a pillow. Plus if it your racquets were strung at very high tensions, it could break. TRIPLE check if anything is damaged.
Good point! I would like to do so, but too bad that guy just used a normal school bag as his racquet bag, didn't even have a proper racquet bag.. My racquets were strung 1-2 lbs over the recommended tension, but I guess yonex racquets shouldn't have much problems with that.. Visually the racquets are still in one piece, not sure about the internal damages though. Hopefully nothing will break before I quit playing badminton...
I assume a yonex racquet can last me a lifetime under normal use (and no one lies on it), so don't worry I wonder why many people just simply don't give respect to racquets? Theres once when I was setting up the net, someone almost stepped onto my racquet.. I could not imagine what happened if I lost my voice at that time and couldn't give that guy a shout..
This is what i ususally with over crowded situation. Have a group of friends sit together, let all our stuff "sit" in the middle of the circle, or be in a corner again the wall/bench/chairs, etc. It's an effective way to put our belonging away from the intruders.
that guy prolly thought you were gonna play against their team and wanted to affect you emotionally. Otherwise he's probably just an idiot. But still, it's always a good habit to depend on yourself to take care of your own belongings. People have lost stuff placed in their bags just beside the court they're playing on.....
Be careful! If you hadn't said something, there might have been some missing items from your bag. Point is, trust nobody in a gym where you don't know everybody.
I usually feel I can trust people when I play in tournaments. I'd hate to have that trust ruined by some disrespectful person like that. Here in NZ though most of those types of people play Rugby . So us badminton players have it pretty easy.
hihi~ ^^" im just coming by and want some comments about how to practice badminton off the court and without a racket.... ~~".. im gonna go ovaseas and i wont be able to play badminton at all, and Im not allowed to bring my racket.. so can you pplz give me some suggestions on how should i improve my badminton during overseas? I really dont want to play bad again... Thanks..
Did you play any badminton here ? As you can imagine there's not a huge amount of people in Nelson that play (partly because Nelson is relatively small to begin with) so the chances of having any dodgy people in a tournament is quite small. And you basically know everyone involved in the sport in a year or two anyway . Same goes for the rest of the South Island really. There's very few people I don't know now! Small world...
if i were you, i would pull away the bag from under his head the second time. would teach him a lesson.
lol take it easy White_Gemini91, the previous post was referring to the bad guy who almost killed my racquet by sitting onto my racquet bag, it was not referring to you. Well, since you don't even have racquets to practice with when you are going oversea, so I guess the best bet for you is to watch the badminton coaching videos from sites like Youtube. They have some very good ones like teaching you how to do footworks, and you can do it at any place you want, including bus stops like I do lol Thx for the advices from everyone! Well, I guess this kinds of things are unavoidable, especially when theres many people.. Just like in the tourney within my campus, theres someone almost sit onto my racquet bag and someone almost stepped onto my racquet.. anyways I knew those people so I was sure that they didn't do it intentionally. Next time, I will just bring a racquet and carry my shoes, towels, drinks, etc with me all the time, so that no one can do anything to them! Well, if the string snaps or sth, then too bad lol
