Norio Sugimoto,  director of SBA, teacher at Ageotachibana high school

Please visit Aragon High School web site where I reported here.

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I was very lucky to see American Badminton at Aragon high school, San Mateo, CA, in March, 2000.  I have been teaching culture crossing through internet since the beginning of 90's and Aragon HS is one of my partner schools. I had a big chance to visit there with my badminton team when I was at Wako Kokusai high school and it was only one week stay, but we got a great experience and shared a lot of things together.  To true the truth, I had never known that American high school students is playing Badminton and I could not believe it at the first when I heard it on communicating via email and bulletin board. After that I knew there are many many Asian people, especially Chinese, and they like to play Badminton.  So I planned to see their badminton there with my team, boys and girls and we visited there in our Spring holidays, of course Aragon HS is on.  We had home-stay and attended classes as guest students, after class, my students joined Badminton activity at gym.  They said Badminton is popular there and all high schools in that school district have the Badminton Club, Also it is the season sports during February to May.  The gym for badminton, sub arena at Aragon HS has a low ceiling and six courts and about 40 students, boys and girls were playing badminton.  The coach was a lady and she was not expert for badminton and just beginner, she was a Basket Ball expert.  So I was asked to coach for her team and I showed them how to practice, racket-work, foot-work and so on for two days.  Of course my students practiced and played together and both of two schools students shared many things, something difference and same about badminton and teenager life.
I will tell you what I found out something from American high school badminton as the following, a) They used plastic shuttle not feather one because of high cost.  b) They like to play badminton very much as same as my students.  c) They sometimes have the practice matches with another high school team before the official matches, like same we do to do.  d) They will be a good rival to Japanese students player in near future, I'm sure.  At the end of my report, I really appreciated Mrs. Soda who coordinated all things for us at Aragon HS., home-stay families, parents who paid the cost for my students and all person who we met.  Thank you.