Four years ago, when Oak Park and River Forest High School seniors Stella Ludwig and Olive Tepfer were eighth-graders at Brooks Middle School, what did they know about badminton?
“Nothing,” Ludwig said simply. “I wasn’t sure it was a real sport.”
Tepfer doesn’t put too fine a point on the subject either.
“Barely anything,” she said. “They would have the net up during gym. I remember being really bad at it. I think I never really tried hard enough to pick it up back then.”
Fast-forward four years and the doubles pair have their eyes on a second trip to the IHSA state tournament, May 15-16, at DeKalb High School. As juniors last year, they got oh-so-close to advancing beyond the first round, losing to a New Trier team 21-19 and 21-10. This time around, the goal is to make it past Friday to get to championship Saturday, where the top 32 teams battle it out for the title.
Get there, and who knows what might happen?
“I think last year we were so shocked and happy we made it,” Tepfer said. “I think this year I’ll definitely approach it with more confidence, especially since it’s our last year.”
Ludwig said she and Tepfer were “starstruck” as juniors, in awe of the event and their potential.
“We know what we’re doing, we’ve been here before,” Ludwig said. “Last year we weren’t expecting to get to state. We’ve gotten better at training in the offseason.”
How serious are these two about badminton, considering they knew nothing about it coming into OPRF as freshmen? Last summer, Ludwig took a badminton class at Stanford University, which was made up of a group of mainly international players.
“I played a guy on the Icelandic national team,” she said, and didn’t beat him.
“He was really good, but I did beat this one guy from China and was very proud of myself.”
During the school year, she and Tepfer and a number of their OPRF teammates travel to Willowbrook to train.
“I think what makes them extremely unique is they’ve been playing doubles the last three years,” said Huskies coach Paul Wright, who said his program has 60 players, four levels and 14 seniors. “They really read the game well and communicate well with each other when they gain and lose points.”
Ludwig and Tepfer are both former tennis players who were floated the idea of badminton during their freshmen campaign. With no sports planned for that spring, they decided to give badminton a shot.
Good decision, and it helped that the pair have been friends since grammar school, given the communication needed to navigate a court that is smaller than tennis.
“You are staggered side to side and back and forth, depending on where the bird is,” Ludwig said. “My dad used to yell at us, ‘You have to talk.’”
If you don’t communicate in badminton, that’s detrimental, not only to the score but one’s physical well-being. Ludwig has pinged Tepfer with the shuttlecock, and Tepfer has hit Ludwig in the face. Obviously not on purpose, but it can happen.
“It’s less running around the court” than tennis, Tepfer said. “You have to hit a lot harder and faster, which is hard to learn and our communication around the court, where your partner is. We had to learn that.”
State notwithstanding, the two have one eye beyond OPRF. There is no NCAA badminton, so the two will attempt to play club at their respective universities – Ludwig to the University of Illinois and Tepfer to George Washington University.
The legacy they leave should inspire a new group of players when they arrive in high school.
“I think we have really good coaches,” Ludwig said. “I’ve never had a bad experience. They genuinely want you to succeed.”
Added Tepfer: “I would say it’s just something super-fun. It’s an opportunity OPRF has.”