As Komiko Noguchi, 19, was preparing for her badminton match with her inexperienced team, she was nervous to open the new season.

That nervousness proved to be the factor as the women’s EC badminton team suffered a laugher against East L.A. college being blown out by a lopsided score of 21-0.

EC’s next match will be against Pasadena City College, the 2010 SoCal champion, at home next Wednesday at 3 p.m.

“I have played badminton since junior high and high school but I was still nervous,” Noguchi said.

On top of the nervousness by the players, the team also acknowledged that they were a little under-prepared and were not focused on being competitive during their season opener.

“A lot of the teams are a lot stronger than us but we want to make sure we still have fun while improving our game,” Tanelle Barnes, 19, said.

“For a lot of the players on the team who had not played a competitive badminton match before, it was a very educational experience but with a lot of hard work and dedication they hope be at that competitive level by the end of the season,” John Britton, women’s badminton and soccer coach, said.

Never the less, even after being completely overmatched, the Warriors remained optimistic that future matches would yield better results.

The first game was not all a loss as it enabled the team to identify some of its weaknesses early on in the season; one was a lack of stamina for some of the players.

“This is the season-opener and we have slowly been putting the team together. We have not had a lot of time to play as a team because you can see from some of the results that we ‘re a little bit practice shy but as the season goes on we will get better and results will improve,” Britton said.

The team practices for two hours, three days a week at the North Gym and hope to be more prepared for its upcoming match.

Having difficulties juggling their class schedule with the team practices, the players have not been able to practice regularly.

“For the next game, we need to concentrate on conditioning and consistency, the basics,” Britton said.