It’s All in the Keppel Family

Elie Wu blazed a trail of dominance in badminton by winning the last two Southern Section girls’ singles titles.

But the senior at Alhambra Keppel High is stepping aside this season in deference to a younger teammate and because she needs a break from her busy playing schedule.

Wu has decided not to defend her title at the section individual tournament Saturday at the Orange County Badminton Club in Orange. Instead, she’ll be rooting for sophomore Jun Hu, a budding talent who developed her skills in the demanding Chinese national training program.

“I believe Jun can take it,” Wu said. “We play together and I know she’s good, compared to most high school kids.”

Wu would seem a good judge of talent. Though only 19, she is the No. 2-ranked women’s player in the United States, a member of the national team and the defending under-22 junior national champion. International competition has taken her to 20 countries.

Few doubt she would have been the first to win four Southern Section singles titles had she not been playing in Denmark as a freshman during the individual tournament and had she chosen to compete this year.

“I believe she is the best [girls’ player] the CIF has ever seen, by far,” said Keppel Coach Vy Vien. “Whether she wins three, two, whatever [number of] titles, there’s nobody who has come even close to what she has done; just blowing the competition away. She’s at a different level than the rest.”

Wu, who trained in Taiwan before moving to the United States before the start of her freshman year, has won all of her high school singles matches, a number that well exceeds 100, said Keppel assistant and former head coach Harold George. In her two section singles finals, Wu barely broke a sweat in routing May Mangkalakiri of Villa Park, 11-1, 11-3, in 2000 and Amanda Lum of Palos Verdes Peninsula, 11-1, 11-1, last year.

Given Wu’s record, it’s not surprising that an opponent once asked Wu not to “bagel” her before a match. For those unfamiliar with the term, that means 11-0, 11-0.

“She’s a superhero,” George said.

Four years ago, Wu didn’t feel very heroic. Because she couldn’t speak English, she felt lost after moving to the United States in 1998. That’s when she considered giving up badminton, the sport she hopes to play at the 2004 Olympics in Athens. Wu is ranked No. 34 in the world, and the top 29 players will qualify for the next Olympics.

“I was going to quit badminton because the reason I moved here was to study,” she said. “Studies were always much more important than anything else.”

But she kept playing after realizing she could eventually compete for the U.S. national team because she was a citizen. Wu was born in Monterey Park specifically so she could gain U.S. citizenship before her family moved back to Taiwan, she said.

Though it took Wu two years before she could speak English, she quickly adapted to the freedoms in the United States.

“In Taiwan, we had to wear a [school] uniform,” she said. “You cannot have long hair. You cannot dye your hair. No earrings, no necklace.... You cannot do anything.

“Here, you can do anything you want. It’s very different.”

Wu has helped ease the cultural transition for Hu, whose family moved to the United States from China last June. Because Hu is still learning English, Wu serves as an interpreter and relays that Hu attended a training academy in China, where she played badminton six days a week and attended school three days a week.

That explains how the 17-year-old was able to compile a 30-0 singles record in her first season at Keppel, winning the Almont League title and earning the No. 3 seeding for the section individual tournament. Hu defeated No. 2-seeded Samatha Jinadasa of Long Beach Poly in an early-season match and has fared well in practice matches against top-seeded Lum, who competes independently because Peninsula does not have a team.

Vien, in his first season as Keppel’s head coach, says Hu could start her own streak of section singles titles Saturday.

“I don’t want to be too confident, but I believe she has a great shot,” said Vien, a former Keppel player who guided Alhambra to the section’s team title in 2000. “She is really skilled. Because of her training in China, her game is really sound.”

In recent years, high school badminton in Southern California has been dominated by Asians whose families hail from countries where the sport is revered. Keppel, with a student body that is 70% Asian, won nine section coed team titles from 1987 to 1998.

Wu honed her skills in Taiwan, but she says playing for Keppel has taught her something just as valuable--teamwork. Although she has played in only about a third of the Aztecs’ matches this season because of an international schedule that takes her abroad every month, she will play for No. 2-seeded Keppel when the section team playoffs start Tuesday.

“The team helped me a lot when I first moved here,” she said. “I didn’t know anything.”

That has changed, Vien said.

“She’s a great leader,” he said. “As busy as she is this year with her schedule and competition, she’s still going to play with her [high school] team.

“Our players have picked up a lot from her, just watching her compete.”

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Badminton

What: Southern Section Individual Championships

Where: Orange County Badminton Club, 1432 N. Main St., Orange

When: Today and Saturday

Today’s schedule: Mixed doubles, 3 p.m.

Saturday’s schedule: Boys’ and girls’ singles and doubles, 1 p.m.

Admission: Free.