1. Seeking to send a sport soaring
Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-me-outthere11apr11,1,7719871,fu\
ll.story

Cee Ketpura, 14, Don Chew's niece and the other player he believes has
an especially bright future, takes a break amid a sea of shuttlecocks
while practicing at the Orange County Badminton Club in Orange. She
has never lost a match in her age group.

Badminton changed Don Chew's young life in Thailand. Now the
successful immigrant businessman is on a mission to raise the game's
profile in his adopted homeland.

Don Chew leaned in close, crinkled his nose and offered a Cheshire
smile that threatened to envelop his face. Yes, he said, he is well
aware that his grand dream -- a foreign man pioneering badminton, a
foreign sport, in a foreign land -- has been preposterous from the
start. But, he said, here's the thing: "It's all coming true."

Chew's American tale has its roots in his native Thailand. It
incorporates faces from Laos, Vietnam, China, Malaysia and Indonesia.
It takes place along the industrial northern tip of Main Street in the
city of Orange.

There, you'll find a cinder block wholesaler, a cement factory and a
metal-cutting shop -- and one large, pink, L-shaped compound. This is
Chew's peculiar empire, and on a recent morning, it was, literally and
figuratively, running on all cylinders.

Literally, the cylinders were churning and groaning inside the
machinery of K&D Graphics, the printing company Chew founded in his
garage in 1981.

On this day, like most others, his 55 employees were feverishly
printing, folding, collating and stapling -- 60,000 Jenny Craig
"Dining Out Success Guides," 17,000 Yonex tennis catalogs, 70,000
Kawasaki catalogs. Thirteen 25,000-foot rolls of paper were being
hustled across a warehouse floor to make room for Chew's latest toy,
an approximately $9-million, 125-foot-long printing press he designed
himself.

All of that would be plenty for most, but Don Chew is not most, and
that's where his more figurative feats begin. The printing business is
one of three enterprises on the compound. Bebe's Cafe, his 95-seat
restaurant, named for his daughter, is out front. And between the
restaurant and the presses is his life's true passion: a virtual
temple to badminton, which he says saved his life.

In three weeks, the Badminton World Federation will freeze the world
rankings in each of the sport's events -- men's and women's singles,
men's and women's doubles and mixed doubles -- and issue invitations
to the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing.

Much of the world will be holding its breath. Not so the United
States, except at Chew's compound, which is, effectively, the de facto
training center for this nation's small, obscure group of world-class
badminton players.

This year, the United States could place athletes in all five events:
Howard Bach, 29, and Khan "Bob" Malaythong, 27, in men's doubles; Bach
and Eva Lee, 21, in mixed doubles; Lee and Mesinee "May" Mangkalakiri,
24, in women's doubles; Lee in women's singles; and Raju Rai, 24, in
men's singles. All, like Chew, 67, are U.S. citizens.

That success would mark another milestone in Chew's remarkable odyssey.

"We got lucky," he said the other day. "Good employees. Hard work."

"Yes," said his wife of 43 years, Kim Chew, his former mixed doubles
badminton partner and the "K" in "K&D Printing." "But he is also, to
some degree. . . ."

Bebe Chew, their daughter, did not look up from her computer.

"Crazy," she said with a laugh. "A little crazy."

To the extent that most Americans have played badminton at all, it has
typically taken place in someone's backyard, often with a racket in
one hand and a beer in the other. It can be a little startling to see
the real thing.

It is played indoors, on a court that resembles a small tennis court,
at a frenetic pace. Top players can smash the shuttlecock -- a
"birdie" made of cork and goose feathers -- at speeds approaching 200 mph.

The game requires power and tact; top players can return those
smashes, depositing them deftly to within an inch of the line on the
other side of the net.

The game has virtually no exposure in the United States. Olympic
hopeful Mangkalakiri said that when she returned recently from a
six-country tour of qualifying tournaments in Europe, a customs agent
asked her what she'd been up to. "He said: 'I didn't even know people
played competitive badminton,' " she said with a laugh.

In many other countries, badminton tournaments are jammed, tickets are
scalped for exorbitant prices and players are treated, Mangkalakiri
said, "like Kobe Bryant."

Chew never made it to that level of the sport as a young man in
Thailand. But he tried, as a teenager, and it was a seminal decision.

"Back then, I had four or five guys around me all the time," Chew
said. "We'd stay up late. Roam around. Fight in the street."

Badminton, he said, taught him discipline. He quit drinking, quit
smoking. Still in high school, he began working alongside his father
at the port authority in Bangkok. He became such a workaholic that a
few years later, after he'd taken a job selling diagnostic machines,
when his family home burned to the ground in the middle of the night,
Chew borrowed clothes from a neighbor before dawn and reported to work
as usual.

"He became so determined," Kim Chew said. "The game taught him how to
win and how to lose."

By 1972, however, his small printing business was foundering as the
Vietnam War eroded the region's economy. He immigrated to Southern
California, first earning $2.75 an hour staffing a conveyor belt at a
beverage factory. In 1981, while working for a medical services
printing company, he persuaded a friend to loan him $5,000 for the
down payment on a small printing press, which he set up in his garage.

He started printing business cards and letterhead and soon talked his
way into larger accounts.

"I was still working my other job," he said. "I would get home, start
printing and print until morning. I would turn it off, go upstairs,
shave and go to work."

He soon quit his "other" job. With his wife and three children -- who
all mastered the art of printing as young teens -- he poured himself
into the business. They bought a four-color press, then a six-color
press, then their first building in 1987.

By the mid-1990s, he was doing $6 million in sales and had his eye on
a strawberry farm on Main Street. In 1994, he bought it for $1 million
in cash.

Today, he and Kim, their three children and six grandchildren live a
few miles away, in three of the five houses on a single block in
Orange. There are 12 more relatives on the payroll. The company
expects to handle about $11 million in sales this year.

But the heart of his 78,000-square-foot empire is the 12-court Orange
County Badminton Club.

Its floors, built of Danish beechwood, rest atop a 2-inch cushion
designed to save the knees of the athletes. The gym is temperature
controlled, and since traditional ventilation would require air flow
that would disrupt the natural arc of shuttlecocks, Chew designed a
special air-conditioning system that uses giant, gentle vents lining
each of the walls.

There have been numerous frustrations.

Chew bickers frequently with the U.S. Olympic Committee, which devotes
very little money to the sport. He props it up the rest of the way,
spending $490,000 last year on coaches' salaries, players' travel and
more, leading some to dub him the godfather of American badminton.

The family wants to broaden awareness of the sport, but corporate
sponsors have been slow to respond. His efforts to introduce badminton
into local schools in an attempt to expand his base beyond Asian
Americans have been fruitless. Without a broader base of elite
athletes, the level of competition can't rise. As it is, U.S. players
who make the Olympics expect to struggle against athletes from nations
where badminton is a phenomenon and a lifestyle -- Indonesia, China,
Korea, Denmark.

But these Olympics, he figures, are still just the beginning. His
highest hopes rest with two players who aren't old enough to qualify
this year. Both, predictably, are relatives: a 14-year-old niece, Cee
Ketpura, who has never lost a match in her age group; and 13-year-old
grandson Phillip Chew, whom Don Chew calls the "Tiger Woods of badminton."

"Olympic gold for the U.S. That is the ultimate dream," he said.
"People tell me I'm crazy. But I never give up. Never."

scott.gold@...

[Thanks to Paras Shah & Katie Monahan for the link!]



2. Maryland Badminton Championships
5/10/2008 - 5/10/2008
Garrison Forest School, Owings Mills, MD
Contact: Richard Shingles shingles@... 410-683-8350
DEADLINE: 5/3/2008

2008 CA Spring Challenge
5/23/2008 - 5/25/2008
Orange County Badminton Club, Orange, CA
Contact: Mary Le caspringchallenge@...
DEADLINE: 5/9/2008

Source: http://www.usabadminton.org/page.asp?page=Events



3. Bay Badminton Center YOUTH SUMMER CAMP 2008
Source: http://www.baybadminton.com/about/news.html


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