WSU’s badminton club hosted a pre-Thanksgiving Smackdown tournament on Sunday.

Hosted at the Student Recreation Center on campus, the tournament consisted of members from both WSU’s badminton club and Spokane Badminton Club. The event started at 10 a.m. and lasted until 7 p.m., said Fang Yu Lim, WSU badminton club president.

The brackets for the tournament consisted of “Group A” and “Group B” and included men’s doubles, women’s doubles and mixed doubles, Lim said. The day started out with round-robin matches to determine which group the teams would be in. The tournament itself used a single-elimination system.

“For every team in the smackdown tournament, they by default gain one point for the B group and five points for the A group,” she said. “If the team is able to progress, they gain an additional two to six points depending on the group they are in.”

Whichever club has the highest average score wins the tournament, according to the event’s rules. This year, WSU won the tournament with 105 points — a 10-point lead over Spokane.

The tournament has been hosted annually since 2012, said Jing Ren Tay, WSU badminton club vice president. 

“We do [the tournament] annually so that [clubs] can actually compete together in one place so that we can get in touch and try to engage with each other,” Tay said.

While large prizes such as gift cards and a smackdown belt were on the line for winners of the tournament, he said each player received a glass with the club’s logo on it. 

Following the smackdown tournament, the event hosted a singles tournament on the same day as well. However, there were no round-robin matches for singles. Tay said he was most excited for those because it is harder to predict what will happen due to the players needing to use different strategies.

WSU student Sujay Dasgupta won the singles tournament this year.

Lim said the next tournament will be hosted either in January 2022 or fall 2022.

“People have been really enjoying the tournament,” she said. “It is a great chance for different clubs to interact and play with new players.”