A Longing Dream of Badminton

When I was in the 6^th grade of elementary school, I was a karate athlete who trained almost every day just to compete and win competitions. During that time too, I decided to join a badminton club, I know it was pretty late, but I had a dream to join Djarum Audition. Well, although I joined Karate much earlier when I was in the fourth grade of elementary school, badminton has always been my favourite sport. I once said that I wanted to be an athlete and became a student at SMA Ragunan. Not only that, but I was so convinced that I just wanted to be an athlete because it made me happy. I said I did not worry about money.

I got better at badminton, but it was hard because I needed to juggle with karate’s tough training. And one day, I won a competition and was selected to become one of the West Java representatives for a national competition. It was confusing. It was a big dilemma in my life. I really did not want to stop playing badminton, but I see no progress. I knew I got so many skills, but karate restrained me from doing more for badminton. I should not miss the chance of being a west java athlete. I did not know what I was thinking at that time, but I listened to my coach’s suggestion that I should stop practising because it had a different stance/kuda-kuda in terms of my feet. So, it might be technical to discuss this, but in karate, our feet movement was in different way compared to badminton. At that time, as an athlete, I felt like yes it was kind of different, but to be honest, if I am thinking about it now, I think it might be possible to continue badminton.

Even when I am writing, I shed tears. I could not hold my tears back, because I know I had been longing for it. When I entered the badminton court here in Jakarta, I felt my heart want to burst and I could not express my feeling about it. I wanted it so much, but I could not. Fate brought me to other things.

The reason why I decided to stop practising karate and not want to become a karate athlete?

Well, I still practised it back then, it was just I decided not to join competitions anymore due to my education. Not only that, but at some point, I realized that karate has no promising future for athletes. God also let me be active in debate competitions when I was in junior high school and senior high school. Fortunately, I achieved a lot of awards at that time, and it made me dream to become a diplomat.

The dream is not always a dream. I did achieve some of my dreams, but I might not reach them. However, my passion for badminton is always there. I have this big dream of joining the Olympics and hopefully, someday, my children will achieve it for me.