Yesterday afternoon, the boys’ badminton team closed a sensational regular season with a 9-1 league record (13-3 overall) after a 5-4 victory over Smithtown East.

The Bears wrung out any potential drama from this final match when they beat Walt Whitman, 6-3, last Thursday to clinch the outright League II Championship. Nevertheless, the boys were sharp in sweeping the season series from the Bulls for the first time in their four-year history to win their fifth in a row as they head into the postseason.

Jerry Liu (15-8, 15-4), Kevin Zhang (15-5, 15-12), and Ulysses Zhang (15-8, 15-8) claimed singles wins while Sam Han and Sam Wong (15-8, 15-11) and Ben Sray and Bob Wu (9-15, 15-13, 15-8) continued their reliable play at doubles.

The boys earned the #3 seed in the Suffolk County playoffs and face #6 Northport (6-10) at home tomorrow afternoon. The Bears are 3-0 all-time against the Tigers and won the most recent match-up on April 24, 8-1. The girls’ postseason fate rests in the hands of undefeated Walt Whitman who can usher the girls in with a victory over Smithtown West. A West loss would give them and Stony Brook identical overall (9-7) and league (5-5) records. The Bears own the tiebreaker by virtue of their two wins over West this season.

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