Pasadena, SD Mesa Class of SCC Badminton

Pasadena City College and San Diego Mesa continue to standout in South Coast Conference women's badminton in 2025. 

Both teams return top players including Mesa's 2024 SCC singles champion Mylene Keophaseut while PCC is led by conference finalist Anh Tran. As a freshman, Keophaseut also earned the 3C2A state doubles title. 

PCC has been the dominant team in the conference's history as the Lancers have 17 team titles going back to 2000 and boast the only state team champions from the SCC in capturing the 2017 and 2018 3C2A crowns. Last year, Pasadena finished as state runner-up to champion City College of San Francisco.

On March 21 at PCC, Pasadena won a close one over Mesa, 12-9, as the Lancers moved into first place at 5-0 with the victory while Mesa dropped to 4-1. Tran, battling through an injury, beat Mesa #2 Emily Chindamay, 21-8, 21-15. Keophaseut rallied to beat Tran, 20-22, 21-9, 21-18.

PCC's Anh Tran

PCC #3 Beatris Tzou came up big with a stirring rally to get past Mesa #3 Christina Nguyen, 21-23, 21-16, 21-17, while also beating #4 Millie Touch, 21-19, 21-15. At #6, Yolanda Huang also scored keys wins, defeating #5 Tien Nguyen, 21-18, 21-6, and #6 Kayli San, 21-13, 21-19.

In doubles, Mesa's top pair of Keophaseut-Chindamay collected wins over Pasadena's #1 top pair of Tran and Janet Diec, 21-17, 21-19, and over PCC #2 of Tzou-Huang, 21-9, 21-19.  Tran-Diec defeated Mesa #2 Nguyen-Nguyen, 18-21, 21-6, 21-19 while Tzou-Huang beat the same Olympians duo, 22-20, 21-15.

In #3 doubles, Christel Joy Villa and Karylle Peralta swept Touch-San, 21-17, 21-13. Peralta, the team's #4 singles in this match, also collected a key singles point in outlasting Touch, 21-13, 15-21, 21-19.

"All of our top six players gave everything they have to get us this big victory," said PCC head coach Jen Ho. "Mesa is a tough team and I was really impressed with how we battled because the match could have gone either way."

Other top SCC players include El Camino's Anya Gore and Montila Winyaworapon, San Diego City's Nicona Maruyama, Compton's Yoon Noe, and East Los Angeles' Stephanie Fuentes. 

El Camino hosts the South Coast Indvidual Championships on Friday, May 2.

Anya Gore  

 Release by Robert Lewis, SCC SID