TONY Yao is studying accounting but he doesn’t let that get in the way of his favourite sporting pastime – badminton.
Despite only having arrived in Australia in November 2009, Yao is now president of the La Trobe University Badminton Club in Bundoora. It started with eight members, after 40 days of filling out forms and running back and forth between the university and the state government.
Now he boasts a club of almost 200 people, meeting on Tuesday nights and weekends.
In China, Yao was in charge of the Tongji University Badminton Club in Shanghai before moving to Australia for study.
“I went to the La Trobe sports centre as soon as I got off the plane in 2009 and asked about badminton,” he says. “When I was told there wasn’t a club, I knew I had to establish one myself because I realised quite a number of students want to play regularly.”
He has been playing the sport since he graduated from high school in 2007 and since moving to Australia has played for various social sides and university teams before creating his own at La Trobe.
Yao is specific when asked why he loves the sport. “From my childhood I tried many different sports but none attracted me like badminton did,” he says.
“I like individual sports more than team sports such as soccer and basketball. I like technique more than physical contact sports such as football. It’s [badminton] high speed. I like being intense and sweaty rather than being calm and peaceful, such as in swimming.”
He is especially proud of the fact that this September he will lead a badminton team to the Australian University Games in Adelaide. He went to the 2011 games on the Gold Coast, but was unable to take a team because of flight costs.
“When I watched that event it set my mind to form a team,” he says. “This year we were glad to see more skilful and enthusiastic players join us, and because Adelaide is not as far as the Gold Coast it allows us to enter a team. We are only qualified to compete in division two, which is a relatively low level, but I think we could finish among the first three places.”
Yao also ensures the club is tight-knit and social, in the spirit of undergraduate university. The members bought group tickets to the 2011 Yonex Australian Badminton Open, the biggest national badminton event, and regularly socialise when the shuttlecocks and racquets are laid down.
“We have dinner together and sometimes the committee members come to my house and we have hotpot or a barbecue.”
