Cabuhat Easily Repeats the Feat

ANAHEIM —  For the second consecutive year, Magnolia’s Joyce Cabuhat has been named The Times Orange County female badminton player of the year. The choice was easy.

Cabuhat, a senior, lost only one match all season. She won the Southern Section individual singles championship. She was named player of the year by the Southern California Badminton Assn. She led her team to an Empire League co-championship and the section semifinals and advanced to the individual doubles quarterfinals with Frances Uy.

Last season, Cabuhat dominated Orange County, but there were many players in the section who performed better. This year, Cabuhat, 17, was the best. She was 49-1, her only loss coming early in the season to Sari Hamman of Diamond Bar in the semifinals of the Garden Grove tournament. It was a match she feels she shouldn’t have lost.

“After she lost she was very upset,” Magnolia Coach Bob Rishel said. “She was really determined after that. She came up to me and said, ‘That will never happen again.’ ”

And from that point on it didn’t. Cabuhat tore through the rest of her opponents. In the section individuals, she didn’t drop a game in winning the championship, easily defeating second-seeded Stella Ng of Alhambra, 11-3, 11-9. And last weekend Cabuhat got her revenge on Hamman, defeating her, 11-6, 7-11, 11-4, in the state prep all-star team championships.

Last season she played mixed doubles with Boris Chung and advanced to the quarterfinals, losing to the top-seeded team. This season she quit playing mixed and moved to girls’ doubles with Uy, but the outcome was the same. Cabuhat is definitely at her best when she is on the court alone, playing her game.

“She is so good, because she analyzes everything,” Rishel said. “When she wins a point she figures out what she did two points earlier to set that up. When she loses a point, she tries to figure out what she did wrong and how she can fix it. She doesn’t do anything without thinking about it.”

Cabuhat’s intelligence on the court is a carry-over from the classroom. With a grade-point average over 4.4, she is the class valedictorian and will attend Cornell in the fall to study premed.

Cabuhat and her family moved to Anaheim from Agana, Guam, 11 years ago. She wasn’t exposed to badminton until high school, which makes her dominance in the sport all the more amazing.

Her dedication on the court and in the classroom is what led Rishel to name Cabuhat captain of this year’s squad.

“There was no doubt in my mind when I made her team captain,” Rishel said. “She led through her experience. She works harder than anyone. I knew what I was getting into when I made the decision. She is every coach’s dream. She is one in a million.”