While the team members individually had mixed degrees of success, the doubles team of Tomoe Okaguchi and Ida Leong walked away with the greatest prize of all; the Southern California doubles badminton championship.

“I was really excited that Tomoe and I won,” Leong said. “Now we can go to state (State Championships) and compete with the best players in the state.”

Leong, Okaguchi, Marjorie Cortez and Danielle Ruedas will be traveling to Fresno for the state finals.

The state finals will be tomorrow and Saturday at noon at Fresno City College.

Friday, there will be an elimination round in which a loss will send the player home. Saturday will host all the players who won Friday.

There will be a semifinal on Saturday morning and those who move on will play in the final during the afternoon.

“One of the really good things about the competition was that I got a chance to meet some of the players from East L.A.,” Leong said. “We were enemies during conference, but we will be friends at the state competition.”

The SoCal Championships took place at the Manhattan Beach Badminton Club, where Leong and Okaguchi advanced to the state finals after beating Pasadena’s Grace Chang and Mika Nataka by scores of 16-11 and 16-9 for the doubles championship.

Due to last Friday’s results, the Warriors had four players qualify to the state finals competition.

Ruedas and Cortez qualified for state despite losing in the quarterfinals.

“I’m really pleased with the women’s performances, especially those of Marjorie and Danielle,” coach John Britton said. “Two years ago, those two ladies did not even know what a badminton racket was.”

For Okaguchi, it was the second straight year that she lost in the singles conference finals after going undefeated in conference play for two consecutive seasons.

However, it was not all one giant party for the Warriors last week.

The women played Irvine Valley College Wednesday in a playoff game, and were thoroughly humbled by one of the elite badminton teams in the country-one that features four members of the U.S. National Team.

“We were totally outmanned by IVC,” Britton said, after his team was beaten 20-1. “As a positive, it was a good experience to play against world-caliber players.”

IVC has proven to be a top quality badminton team having won championships in 2002, 2003 and 2004.

However, playing against the best was not a complete disaster and some good did come as a result.

“The only bright spot was Brittany Garcia’s game, which turned out to be our only win,” Britton said.

“They were incredibly good,” Monique McShane said. “They were beyond belief.”

Perhaps it was Cortez who summed up the situation best: “We got our butts kicked,” she said.

Now it is time for the badminton team’s version of the Fantastic Four to uphold the pride of the SCC Champion in Fresno this weekend when they compete against the best teams in the state .

“We will do our best,” Leong said. “We have high ambitions, but I think the most important thing will be that we have the opportunity to play against great players who have a lot of experience,” Leong said