Lake Park ends tournament woes

Considering its history, the last thing Lake Park expected was to leave Rolling Meadows' badminton tournament carrying the first-place trophy.

But that's what the Lancers did, thanks in part to the scoring system used by Rolling Meadows coach Ken Mills. It states that if a person or doubles team wins their match in two games, they get 1.1 points. If they win in three, they get 1 point.

The final scores showed Lake Park with 32.5 points while runner-up Stevenson finished with 32.1.

Few teams have suffered at Rolling Meadows as much as Lake Park. The Lancers haven't won this tournament in the 26 years since Sandi Menzie became the Lancers coach, and who knows how long before that.

"It's the depth," Menzies said. "I don't have stars. I just have a lot of good kids from 1 to 12."

Among the top performers for Lake Park was the first doubles team of Pearl Evangelista and Tiffany Parillo, and the second doubles team of Anita Gonzalez and Tammie Ng, who won all five of their matches to win those levels.

The singles champion of the meet was Rolling Meadows sophomore Kim Martini, who usually plays second singles. She moved up a level and found not much difference between first and second singles.

"Not really," Martini said. "I tried to get better, learn things."

Martini's toughest match was against Lake Park's Sarah Pudell, whom Martini defeated 21-14, 21-16.

"It was really close and we had some good points, but she's stronger than me," Martini said. "It was fun."

"She's a comer," Mills said of Martini. "She's smart, tough and she wants to win."

Stevenson has won countless titles at Rolling Meadows and nearly did it again.

"They had a great team," Stevenson coach Mike Fitzgerald said of Lake Park. "For us, we had five JV up because we had four players taking the ACT and one visiting a college.

"Sam Wei is normally (part of our) No. 1 doubles team, but the team I put out today (Kerry Sullivan and Ashley Gorson) went undefeated in first doubles today."