Amherst Badminton Brings Eight Colleges Together for Invitational

When Tetsuya Tanaka ’28 first envisioned a collegiate badminton competition during his freshman year, he wanted to address what he saw as a gap between college badminton teams. With roughly one tournament per semester, opportunities for the team to compete and get to know players from other colleges were limited.

That idea became the Amherst Invitation Badminton Tournament, which returned for its second annual run on Oct. 10, bringing together eight college teams from across New England. 

Although Tanaka originally came up with the idea of a multi-school tournament in his freshman year, he shelved the idea because of the obstacle of playing space. Amherst has only three badminton courts, not nearly enough to accommodate multiple visiting teams. He returned to the idea as a sophomore when he ventured the idea to Ayaan Sattar — the UMass Badminton Team’s president — during a scrimmage. Sattar was immediately on board, and the two teams worked together to bring their vision to life. 

Tanaka recalls that planning the inaugural tournament was a learning curve. The organizers had little experience hosting a competition of that scale and had to navigate everything from securing sponsorships and collecting entrance fees from participating colleges to scheduling shuttles. Despite logistical hurdles, the first invitational was a success, with seven teams participating.

This year, Tanaka and the club wanted to do more. With access to 10 courts at the UMass Recreation Center, the tournament grew to eight teams. They also received food from UMass dining and were sponsored by Weee! — the largest online Asian supermarket — Victor Badminton, and the webcam company EMEET. 

“It was never smooth sailing, but our team and the other teams were always willing to step in and help,” Tanaka said. “It really felt like a tournament planned together as a community — not just one or two schools, but all of us.”

The competition began with round-robin play, with teams divided into two groups, followed by two rounds of a single-elimination playoff. Matches occurred simultaneously across courts, with as many as three games taking place at once.

The tournament used team-based match play, in which the winner is the team that takes the majority of sets within a tie (a tie consists of two men’s singles matches, one women’s singles match, two men’s doubles matches, one women’s doubles match, and one mixed doubles match).

Brown University defeated the Minutemen 4-2 in the championship match, while Yale University finished third. Amherst finished seventh, ahead of rival Williams, which finished eighth.

Reza Tasnim ’29, a member of the Amherst badminton team, said the invitational provided a rare opportunity to build relationships through the sport.

“The tournament was a great opportunity to have fun and build community around badminton, especially since tournaments like these are really rare for badminton,” Tasnim said. “Furthermore, it's a great time to hang out with the team and learn from each other. I feel a lot closer to the team after the tournament.”

That community-building opportunity reflects the original motivation behind the invitational: creating opportunities for college teams to connect that otherwise might not exist. For Tanaka and the other organizers, the second annual invitational is another step toward making those connections through collegiate badminton.