Xu HuaiWen

During these past few years, I've had the honor of meeting some of the most amazing badminton players from all over the world, mostly from out-of-the-blue encounters that became great stories to tell friends.

Being in a now-growing badminton community, living in Bellevue has brought me the great opportunity of getting to know Xu HuaiWen, who has retired from badminton to become head coach at Bellevue Badminton Club.

Once you get to know these people in person, newspaper interviews and online biographies never do justice to the motivated, disciplined and down-to-earth people that many of these athletes are. Xu HuaiWen never fails to amaze me in her dedication, and everything she's said to me has inspired me. She's quite an amazing person, so for those of you who ever see her, I'd advise you to get a quick chat with her to see what a great person she is.

Anyways, I thought I'd do a quick bio of her, for those of you who might not know just who she is.

Photo taken from BellevueBadminton

I remember having a conversation with her, walking around the BBC lobby where a party had just occurred. We were busying shuffling thing around, acting like we were cleaning up, chatting about things here and there. Somehow our conversation seeped into childhood. "I remember I left home when I was around 10." I was a little startled, but she was quite calm about the whole story-- no sense of remorse or self-sympathy.

She was born in China, and began playing badminton when she was eight, specializing in singles. Despite winning many awards at a fairly young age, the Chinese National Team deemed that her height of 5 feet 3 inches was too short to let her join. Because of this, she left to Germany, and her story shows us all that with enough motivation, dedication and perseverance, no one can tell you what you can and can't do.

She went on to have an incredibly successful career playing for Germany, attending both 2004 Athens and 2008 Beijing Olympics. She placed 5th in the latter, losing in a close match to Xie Xing Fang (who was #1 at the time). Aside from the Olympics, she's placed 3rd in 2005 and 2006 BWF World Championships, 1st in 2006 and 2008 European Championships, and plenty of other medals from assorted Masters tournaments all over Europe. Most amazingly, she's played first in all of the German National Championships from 2004-2008.

She's achieved all of that and more before she was 27, and retired in 2009, on an incredibly high note.

The rest of the story is history.

I never knew just how many people loved her until I walked around the Washington Open last year. I had numerous people pull me to the side and say "Is that Xu Huaiwen? She's here?! No way!"

But aside from her many achievements, she never tells people that badminton is the most important thing. In countless interviews and even in person, she always reminds us that no matter what we do, always dream big and put your ambitions first.

She's a fantastically humble, down-to-earth person (and very humorous, too!). If you've got the time, I'd advise you to get online and read her incredible story, and digest some of the great life lessons that she tries to instill in all of her fans.

Anyways--! That's it for now! Till next time...!