Bluder `25 is in the family business Badminton Club rallies with tournament

By Ellianna Cierpiot cierpiot@grinnell.edu

Badminton at Grinnell has a complicated history. Established in 2007, revived in 2013, another time in 2017 and, finally, revived once again in 2022, the club has lived in sporadic iterations as Grinnell College students have come together to volley, compete and enjoy the sport of badminton.

Tae Hyeong Moon `23, one of the club’s badminton experts, has been playing the sport for 16 years –– since he was only 7 years old.

By Mohammad Igbaria igbariam@grinnell.edu

From Darby Gymnasium to Carver-Hawkeye Arena, David Bluder `25 and his mother, Lisa Bluder, have found a common love for basketball.

Head coach for the University of Iowa’s women’s basketball team, Lisa Bluder’s passion for basketball traces back to her childhood. She said that when she was a kid, her father put up a basketball hoop in their backyard for her older brothers. While they never used it, she wore it out.

“I had an instant love for the game,” she said. Bluder’s basketball career began in the third grade, and she later played at the University of Northern Iowa from 1979 to 1983. She began coaching women’s basketball at St. Ambrose University in Davenport, Iowa the next year. In her 6 seasons at St. Ambrose, they only lost 36 out of 205 games.

David Bluder `25

After 10 successful seasons coaching the Bulldogs at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, Bluder began serving as the head coach of the University of Iowa’s women’s basketball team in 2000. In the 24 seasons since, Bluder has earned a win-loss record of 463-242 with the Hawkeyes and has become the highest all-time winning coach in their program’s history.

Just this year, she led the Hawkeyes to become champions of the Big Ten Conference for the fourth time in her tenure and later to the finals of the National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA) Division I women’s basketball tournament for the first time in program history.

David Bluder’s career in basketball began similarly to his moth- er’s. He first got into basketball as early as kindergarten after his parents got him a little hoop to attach to the backs of doors. He said he would always shoot in the kitchen while his parents cooked or worked there. He also began playing competitive basketball in the third grade.

“We grew up shooting in the driveway a lot,” David said. “She would always make me make five free throws in a row before we ended the workout.”

Growing up, David and his two sisters, Hannah and Emma, accompanied their parents to each tournament the Hawkeyes played in. On weekends, he would go with his mother to her team’s practices.

“She would have practice, and I would be running around Carver-Hawkeye Arena,” he said.

He eventually joined the men’s basketball team at Grinnell in 2021. In his two seasons with the Pioneers, Bluder has scored 470 points over 49 games. His father, also named David, has been to almost every single one of his games.

Watching her son on the court, Lisa said, “When he’s out there smiling and having fun, and when the joy is there, that’s what I enjoy more than anything.”

And for David, when his mom is able to attend his games, he said that her being there helps keep him centered. “Just having her presence in the gym definitely makes me feel calmer.”

When their roles are switched and David watches his mother’s team take the court, he said that the Hawkeyes’ victories have been amazing to watch.

“I remember when they went to the Sweet 16 for the first time, and I thought that was the best thing ever,” he said. “Then we went to the Elite Eight in 2019. And now a Final Four and a national championship game, and it has definitely been crazy. It doesn’t feel real.”

He added that when Caitlin Clark made that game-winning 3-pointer as the buzzer sounded against Indiana University Bloomington, he and his family “just started going crazy. It was the best moment ever.”

“I got introduced to it [badminton] by one of my childhood friends who just gave me a racket and a shuttle,” Moon said. “I had no idea what it was. I didn’t know the rules. I kind of just played it. It was fun to hit the shuttle back and forth with my friend and just [be] like, ‘hey, I’m doing a sport.’”

Having grown up with the sport, continuing to play badminton at college helped Moon feel at home, especially since he had even considered playing badminton professionally. When Moon joined the badminton club in the 2017-18 academic year, he said it created a welcoming community for those who loved the sport.

I think that’s the best part about Badminton Club is that it’s literally all levels there.

Isabelle Kolleth `24

“I think that’s the feeling I’ve gotten anywhere with badminton is, once you get on a court, people sort of just play and enjoy each other, and there’s a lot of sportsmanship behind it. I’ve never had a bad experience playing badminton as of yet,” Moon said. “And I feel like it’s always a welcoming sport to go anywhere.”

Moon said he found that badminton offered a community regardless of experience or location, and was something he also sought out when he was away from home in the Korean military.

“I was in Korea, but I never lived in Korea before, so I didn’t have any friends. And so I decided to join a badminton club somewhere, like just pay and participate in it, and the people there were just really welcoming … I just love badminton, wherever I’ve played it,” Moon said.

The 2022 Badminton Club is different from the one Moon was active in before. Since the club’s leaders, Zoey Nahmmacher-Baum `24 and Isabelle Kolleth `24, registered Badminton Club as a student organization with a budget last year, the club now has access to funding that allows them to host events like their recent tournament on Saturday, April 15.

The April 15 tournament consisted of five categories — male singles and female singles (one-on-one matches), male doubles, female doubles and mixed doubles. Although the gendered division in categories was a concern for organizers, it was organized this way by the club’s tournament committee to make it so as many students as possible could participate. That way, it was as close to an official regulation tournament as possible, according to Nahmmacher-Baum.

“They [the club’s tournament committee] did want to make the tournament as professional as possible,” Nahmmacher-Baum said. “And so they made sure that our nets were the right height and things like that, and so we did have to use those five categories. But we did really encourage all of our participants to go in whatever category they felt most comfortable.”

The tournament was open to all skill levels of players, something that Kolleth said made it difficult to seed the bracket but led to surprising matches.

“I think we were a little bit surprised at how many more casual people came — in a good way — that it wasn’t everybody who was super competitive and super experienced,” Kolleth said. “I’d like to think that everybody had a good time.”

The club leaders reserved the

Charles Benson Bear `39 Recreation and Athletic Center’s auxiliary practice gym for the tournament, and were able to use their budget to purchase supplies, snacks and trophies — something that they had been unable to do in the past. Kolleth and Nahmmacher-Baum both recalled entering a supply closet upon reviving Badminton Club to find a dusty, snapped in half badminton racket.

“Last year in the spring semester, I think we officially became an organization, and that got our budget approved through SGA,” Nahmmacher-Baum said. “So with that, we could completely revamp our supplies. We got all new rackets, we got feather birdies, plastic birdies, we got a super cool cart to hold all the rackets. And since then, everything has been a lot easier.” play and enjoy each other, and there’s a lot of sportsmanship behind it.

Tae Hyeong Moon `23

Both club leaders anticipate the coming years of Badminton Club as a re-established campus institution. According to Kolleth, the club’s skill diversity and welcoming atmosphere is a high priority for the club.

“I think that’s the best part about Badminton Club, is that it’s literally all levels there, especially because we have such a diverse amount of people coming because, especially in international countries, [in] a lot of places, badminton is more popular than it is here,” Kolleth said. “So there are some people coming in who are so good at badminton, played professionally, super competitive. And then we also just have a ton of people who literally played it for one week in gym six years ago.”