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The Lancers badminton team continue their perfect season by defeating East LA College Friday, 15-6, improving to a 4-0 overall record.

The Lancers have now won 16 straight South Coast Conference matches, dating back to last season. Pasadena have been on the winning end versus the East LA program in 6 consecutive meetings.

With the acquaintance process in the first year out of the way, head coach Jennifer Ho believes that she has found a system that best fits this program and its success since assuming the role of coach in 2015.

“Because I got to know the players better, it makes my decision of putting the right players on the court together easier,” Ho said.

After their 20-1 win over El Camino-Compton Center, the Huskies found themselves stuck in a huge hole against a seasoned PCC team right from the get go.

Sophomore Rebecca Tzou started the singles competition with a two set sweep over East LA’s No. 1 starter Jean Buenaflor. Tzou put away Buenaflor 21-8 in the second set after a close five point affair in the first.

In her second match-up of the day, Tzou faced freshman Serena Lieu and defeated her in two straight sets as well.

It’s hard to predict what will happen during a game but Tzou says that she has a go to play she likes to stick by and use as much as possible.

“I call it the ‘push and drop’.” said Tzou. “Short, quick pushes to the back prove to be very lethal. If that doesn’t work, I starting dropping it and work the opponent that way.”

Both Serena Lieu and Jean Buenaflor rebounded with a win in their second singles game by defeating Pasadena’s Eugenia Mendez to bring East LA even with PCC at two points apiece.

Though Mendez ultimately lost both contests to Buenaflor and Lieu, she definitely did not make it easy for them.

After losing the first set by 8 points to Buenaflor, Mendez forced a third and final set after squeezing out a 22-20 win in the middle frame.

Before closing the door in the second set, Mendez tested Lieu with a back and forth rally in the first.

The Lancers were clean of errors for the rest of the singles match-ups as Daniela Raygoza, Sandra Maw, Hong Yan Liu and Jennifer Delgado all won two games each in sweep fashion to give PCC some breathing room heading into doubles play.

East LA’s top doubles pairing in Jean Buenaflor and Serena Lieu were unstoppable, winning both games versus Pasadena’s two best doubles teams.

Buenaflor and Lieu made easy work of Eugenia Mendez and Daniela Raygoza, not allowing them to reach double digit points in the sweep.

No result on Friday came close to as shocking than the win that ELAC’s top pairing, Jean Buenaflor and Serena Lieu, were able to snag from the defending CCCAA doubles champs Rebecca Tzou and Sandra Maw with identical 21-15 scores in back to back sets.

The upset, however, had no significant impact on the overall team score as it was the last game of the afternoon.

Tzou and Maw were able to bounce back by convincingly defeating Han Le and Catherine Vong. with scores of 21-3 and 21-4.

“My weakness is her strength and her weakness is my strength,” said sophomore Sandra Maw, on working with Rebecca Tzou. “It has came to a point where we don’t have to let each other know where one is on the court verbally.”

The next time these two schools meet will be on Apr. 29, the last day of the regular season.

Although Pasadena came out on top as the victor, the four games that Pasadena lost to the Huskies are a season high.

Coach Jennifer Ho decided to go with a different game plan by moving up Eugenia Mendez to 2nd in the line-up and sliding Sandra Maw down to 4th on the depth chart.

Originally scheduled for March 4, PCC will host El Camino in a make-up match on Wednesday, March 23, in Hutto Patterson Gymnasium at 2 p.m.

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