Sitting under the classroom lights, her eyes bright and her smile even brighter. She’s excited, ready to talk about her sport and her future. Giselle Correa Anaya, a senior at East Leyden, is a motivated badminton player and is passionate about both her sport and her future.

     Entering high school, Giselle didn’t know what sports were offered to students at the school. She starts, “I started playing badminton because in my freshman year, I was really curious about all the sports and clubs that they offered at the school. So in the spring, I decided to try out just for fun, and after I made it, I really ended up liking the sport. I decided to come back for the next season.” 

     Once she made the team, Giselle had begun learning the difficulties that came along with playing the sport. “The most challenging part about the sport is when you’re in your third set of the match and you’re really tired and exhausted and your legs are burning, you still have to keep going and pull out the correct moves.” She continues, “I feel like when you’re really tired in the game, you always make the dumbest mistakes, or you’ll miss your serves. So definitely, that’s the most challenging part. What motivates me during these times is definitely winning. I always think the end result is winning and keeping a streak of winning.” 

     The support of Giselle’s teammates is also important to her and how she performs during a match. She says, “During our break in the match, my teammates will come up to me and give me tips, advice, or corrections on anything that I was making silly mistakes on so I can use it against my opponent for the next match. They’ll also tell me what some of my opponents’ weaknesses are, so I can use it against them.” She also mentions one of her coaches. “My biggest cheerleader in badminton is definitely Coach Zitzka. He is definitely one of those coaches who will not sugarcoat anything and will be brutally honest to you, especially if it’s something at the moment you don’t want to hear but should.  He definitely knows me as a player, and he knows when I’m playing to the best of my ability or to the worst. He will be honest with you and tell you what to improve on,” she continues, “One really good piece of advice I like to use that my Coach Zitzka gave me was to always hit the birdie to the opposite hand of what the player is using because they’ll always mess up since it’s their bad side. He also told me to look for my opponent’s weaknesses.” 

     During her years as a badminton player, Giselle has significantly improved since her freshman year. Along with this, she has accomplished many things, some more important to her than others. She explains, “My biggest accomplishment I’ve had while being on the team so far is my junior year, placing third place in first singles, which was a huge improvement compared to last season, when I placed third place in fifth singles. I’m very proud of myself for that, because it took a lot of hard work.”

     Giselle later transitions, talking about her biggest supporter. “My biggest supporter outside of the sport is definitely my mom.” She starts, “I love my mom. She always supports me in everything. She always tells me to try for everything, and even if it’s hard or if I’m struggling, to give it my all.”She also mentions her plans after high school, as well as her future as a badminton player. Giselle says, “I would love to play badminton after high school, because it’s a sport that I genuinely do enjoy to play and love, but it would definitely be harder playing it at a college level just because I started playing badminton so late. Also, not a lot of colleges offer the sport badminton, so that just makes it harder, but I would definitely still play badminton as a hobby to do for fun.” She continues, “As of right now, my plans for after high school is to definitely attend a four year college or university to major in Child Life or Child development, to hopefully in the future, become a child life specialist.”

     A great player and student, Giselle is ready to give it her all on the court to end her final high school badminton season feeling accomplished. Afterwards, her bright future will be patiently waiting for her.