Jim Xu (pronounced “shoo”) is stocky, standing 5-foot-seven-inches tall and about 180 pounds. Not the build you might expect out of a badminton champion if you weren\u2019t familiar with the competitive version of the sport.
\nThis isn\u2019t your grandmother\u2019s badminton in elementary school, you might say.
\n“At the high school level, a smash can be clocked up to 100 miles per hour,” says Xu, who as one of four co-captains for University City High coach Jordana Barrios Tu\u2019s team, helped lead the Centurions to the CIF team championship last month. The other co-captains, all graduating seniors as well, are Candace Poon, Arriane Gatlabayan, and Thomas Hua.
\nXu, unfailingly polite to an interviewer who comes to his residence as his father, John, sits quietly nearby, gives a mini-clinic on what he says are the “building blocks” to badminton: footwork and hitting form.
\nIf someone were to pass badminton off as an easy sport, Xu, who plans to matriculate at UC Riverside in the fall to study computer science and continue playing badminton competitively, says he would respond, “Badminton is a pretty fast sport. You don\u2019t have time to react. It\u2019s really fast.”
\nIn addition, “There are long rallies that require endurance.” Xu has a physique that looks like he can last. He has proven that in CIF and league play. A year ago with partner Kenny Liu, who graduated, he grasped the CIF men\u2019s double title. This year, new partner Thomas Hua and Xu took home second place.
\nWith Xu and his teammates, the UC team under Barrios Tu has gone to the CIF finals four years in a row, taking a first or second place each of Xu\u2019s years in high school. That\u2019s an impressive record in any sport.
\nXu came to America from Guangzhou (formerly Canton), in southern China, with his father John and mother Amy when he was 9 or 10 “so that they could keep me a better environment for studying.” Also, Xu would plead this case for the challenge of his sport, “It requires you to constantly think. When you are making one shot, you have to be thinking of your next shot.”
\nIn his private demonstration of technique, he positions his solid-built body at an angle with his left foot back. “You plant your left foot (if you\u2019re a right-hander like Xu), and lunge with your dominant (right) foot,” he shows. He pivots on his base foot, his left foot. “Side-to-side, it\u2019s going to be similar\u2014left foot back, step with your right.”
\n“If you don\u2019t learn the basic footwork, as well as the hitting form, you won\u2019t improve as much as others,” he says, sounding not like the lone child he is, but rather an older-brother type of team captain who is used to helping others with their technique.
\nA key of hitting the birdie, he says, is striking the aerial at about the peak of its flight. “When you hit the birdie solid, you can tell the moment you hit it,” he says. “It makes a certain sound. If you don\u2019t hit it squarely, it makes a sound kind of like hitting metal, because you probably hit it on the racquet frame” (which is made out of a composite graphite material for strength while being lightweight).
\nNot immodestly, he reveals that he has his two playing racquets, which go for a couple of hundred dollars each, strung tighter than the average player. “The tighter the stringing, the smaller the sweet spot” in the center of the racquet, he says. It affords him more power and pop.
\nOne thinks of Muhammad Ali\u2019s self-description, “Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.” Xu wants to sting the birdie as he returns it over the net, while remaining mobile on his feet.
\nOne of his practical jokes is, in announcing the UC team\u2019s lineup before a match, much in the way high school tennis teams have a captain announce the lineup, declaring, “In women\u2019s singles, Candace Poo,” pronouncing his teammate\u2019s last name incorrectly on purpose. “She doesn\u2019t expect it. I do it a lot. It\u2019s really funny.” And she doesn\u2019t seem to get irritated.Badminton is a social game, and the Centurion team, according to Xu, is a “really close” group of individuals that “goes out to eat after many away matches.” “It depends on where we play, but almost everyone on the team loves Korean barbecue. We go to Convoy Street.”
\nHe first saw his mother Amy play badminton when he was a small child. Then, when he was in the eighth grade, they went to Doyle Recreation Center in University City where he began playing himself.
\nHe explains why the family wanted to position him in the educational program here. “In China, it is too stressful, way too competitive.” What he means is the number of places in universities is dwarfed by the population of students in the huge country.
\n“When I jump smash (the birdie), it\u2019s a feeling like I get from nothing else,” he enthuses.
\nHow does he achieve his high level of effectiveness of hitting? “You look for exactly where the birdie is, then you jump and release all the energy you have to smash the birdie.”
\nIt sounds very satisfying: kinesthetic (a physical sensation), visual (looking for the location of the birdie), aural (hearing the contact on the sweet spot of the racquet).<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Jim Xu (pronounced “shoo”) is stocky, standing 5-foot-seven-inches tall and about 180 pounds. Not the build you might expect out of a badminton champion if you weren\u2019t familiar with the competitive version of the sport. This isn\u2019t your grandmother\u2019s badminton in elementary school, you might say. “At the high school level, a smash can be […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":726,"featured_media":276835,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11560","_seopress_titles_title":"Jim Xu, A University City High School badminton star","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11560,11551],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-276834","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-la-jolla-village-news","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276834","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/726"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=276834"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276834\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/276835"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=276834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=276834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=276834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}