Badminton Tournament

Okay, so we had another badminton tournament. It was out-of-town, only by fifteen minutes though. It was purely doubles and the girls went to one school while the boys went to another. Both of us got second place.
And something really funny happened. It's one of those things where you probably had to be there to truly appreciate how funny it was, but the people I've told who weren't there found it at least kind of amusing.
So me and my partner were playing this team and we knew that they hadn't lost yet. It was pretty early in the tournament, but that was still a big deal. So these people were both really happy and hyper (as people on a winning streak often are) and the match started out in their favour. They won the serve and got... I think four points on us or something like that. Then it was my serve.
Apparently my serves are very intimidating to recieve. What I do is that I stand there, ready to serve, adjusting my hold and flexing my fingers on my racket and glaring at different spots on the court, looking for my opponents weak points. Whether they're trying to cover up a back hand or if they're too far back I notice and use it to my advantage, not only in the serve but in the game as well. I usually do this for about ten seconds, and that may not seem like much, but with the pressure of your parents and half your team and your coach and the other team watching you, it seems really long 'cause not returning a serve is like fumbling the perfect rebound shot in hockey or basketball.
I honestly didn't really realize I was doing this until my coach commented on my excellent serving strategy. I mean, I look for weak points on purpose, but he told me that it was genius because I was freaking out the other player. People never react to them well. Of course, I'm aiming for what I think is their weakest point, so they can rarely return it well. What I didn't realize is that ebcause I was tkaing so long and giving their position and court the "death stare" I was causing the other player to:
-Loose confidence
-become intimidated
-Miss it because they've stopped paying attention
-Get out of their ready position
-Get annoyed and try to smash it even though it isn't a lift and hit the net
-Just plain old not hit it because I'm good at getting it barely past the service line
- And if nothing else they lift it and my partner smashes it or otherwise hits a good shot back at them. She's really good at stuff like that, so we're a good team.
So after I realized that I was accidentally intimidating the krap out of the opponent I took a second to look one of them in the eyes before I served it to them and was surprised to see an expression displaying something close to fear. It was kind of weird, I almsot felt bad, but I remembered we were trying to scare them so we could win.
Other teams in the tournament, just didn't say anything about the serves or left, definitely showing signs of being motivated to work on their serves. One team even complimented me several times, during and after the match on my serve.
This team we played though didn't take it that well.
Everytime I served, one girl on the opposite team would get SO impatient. She usally ended up dropping her racket (not literally, this just means she's not standing in her ready position), stomping her foot and yelling at me to hurry up. So of course as soon as she did that, I served it and she either missed it or hit it really horribly. Several times she almost stormed off the court she was so mad. Not to mention she asked me "politely" to hurry up with the serve. I "politely" reminded her that I technically had thirty seconds.
Constantly she would complain about how unfair it was, but my partner reminded her that she also had the right to a thirty second serve, but she, nor her partner decided to take it.
We ended up winning by two points. I felt really bad for making her so upset (you should have seen her, she was about to hit me over the head with her racket) but I had my right to the way I served. In fact I was only usually using a third of the time I was allowed to.
So we shook hands and she tried to crush my hand, but being mormon I was just flat-out a better handshaker than her and she failed miserably. So I apologized to her, not wanting her mad at me. I didn't realize how angry she was until later on because people usually try to get me to hurry up or try to distract me while I'm serving so I've trained myself not to look at them unless completely necissary.
So as soon as we finished she stormed up to the officials and her coach and started ranting on-and-on about how horrible I was, that I was cheating and stated plainly that her goal was to get me disqualified. Of course I had followed her to make sure she told the score keeper the right score because she was so mad I didn't know what she might have done.
My partner (behind really protective of her friends) was about to punch her and was fuming about it for the rest of the tournament. I just felt bad, I swear I was about to cry I was so sorry I had made her so upset. I wasn't sorry I had taken so long to serve(I -along with her- had a right to serve like that) it just bugs me when people are upset, especially when it's caused by me.
So her coach was trying to calm her down, not completely sure of the facts and whether or not I had been taking as long as she was saying. By the way she was swearing that I had taken over thirty seconds, which was ridiculous. Over twenty witnesses said that I had not even come closeto that. My coach talked to her coach, telling him that I rarely took more than ten seconds and they both agreed that she was being unreasonable and that I was not to blame, nor was I in line for any punishment.
All the people who were watching and had unbiased opinions knew that she was being an idiot. Getting so upset about something like that is like getting upset at somebody for smashing it because it's hard to return. Guess what? That's the point. We want to do stuff that makes it hard for the other team to return it, without that competitive badminton wouldn't exist.
She was just trying to justify why she was loosing and make it my fault. It took me a really long time to realize that, but yeah, she was just blaming me for making her loose. Of course that's the stupidest thing ever, because your opponent is trying to make you loose. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that.
To sum it all up, she was getting mad at me because something I (her opponenant) caused her to loose. Oh yeah, that's a such a huge injsutice when playing a sport.
Most of the people watching thought it was hilarious. It kind of reminds me of when I was a kid and my sister and I were doing something and she ended up winning and I got mad at her, complaining that she was "winning on purpose". My team and coach were especially amused. My coach was almost crying he thought it was so funny. At the time I thought they were being mean. She was really upset about it, but looking back I have to admit it was pretty funny.
She thought she had been the victim of some horrible injustice and the entire time refused to accept that she was not. The officials told her she was being unreasonable and to take a seat and calm down or else she would get kicked out. At this she finally shut-up, well kinda. She spent the entire rest of the tournament trying to make me mess up on serves. She would sit on the side lines with as many of her teamates and family members as she could and never failed to point me out whenever and wherever I was was serving. Once I messed up and she laughed hysterically, trying to make me feel bad. I was hardly even paying attention to her though, I'm good at tuning out stuff like that. Although after a while it got annoying and I was about to tell somebody about it because what she was doing was definetly very worthy of being disqualified.
After a while I stopped feeling guilty and accepted that an hour after the match it was no longer my fault that she was so upset.
So anyways, her school ended up winning the tournament. I have to admit that as a whole they were pretty good. The winners got T-shirts and nobody else got anything.
Afterwords my partner and I were sitting on a bench in the playground at the school holding the tournament and she walked by. She stopped to smugly inform us that her school had won the tournament and I calmly replied "Yeah, okay, I hope you have fun with that T-shirt,"
She was trying to make me jealous or something I think, but I'm not really the jealous type, so it didn't work.
My partner was absolutely furious and I actually had to grab her arm to silently remind her that her superb sucker-punch was for self defense purposes only. She admitted later that she was just glad I had come up with a good come back.
Other than feeling sad that somebody was having such a horrible time and I was to blame, I was just glad that I had a partner I enjoyed and that we both played well and got our school a good amount of wins. In fact I think we only lost three out of our fifteen matches, so nothing to be ashamed of.