When badminton coach Roy Newton saw the turnout for his girls badminton team this year, nearly double from last season, one question came to mind: how will they have practice with so many players?

In its fourth year at Mercer Island High School, 65 girls turned out for badminton, well above last year’s turnout of 34. That’s a lot of players to share a limited amount of court space in a no-cut club sport.

It’s a good problem to have for the up-and-coming program, which is aiming to get more competitive.

“How we break this team up is a big question,” Newton said. “We’ll be watching these girls play and figure out who’s going to be our number-one players and who’s going to be our exhibition players and then maybe have a C group where they’ll play within house. We’re trying to figure that all out.”

Dividing its athletes in groups of ranked and exhibition players, the Islanders field six singles players and four doubles teams at its meets, taken from its squad of ranked players. Exhibition players, similar to a junior varsity squad, compete afterwards.

The Islanders compete in a KingCo division that features nine teams, which consists of mostly Eastside schools. The division originated within the Bellevue School District, with teams from Bellevue, Interlake, Sammamish and Newport originally competing amongst each other.

Team wins weren’t frequent last year, but that’s not the program’s sole focus. Though this year, Newton said he’s asking his team to raise its level of competition while trying to maintain the congenial atmosphere of a no-cut sport.

“We’ve raised the intensity this year. We’re really asking them to step up competitively, but we’re still a sport where a lot of girls come out that aren’t as athletic and they just want a chance to play a sport and not be cut from it,” Newton said. “We don’t want it to be overly competitive. I want it to be an inviting sport and a fun sport where they learn how to be better athletes, how to compete and also enjoy a sport that’s not overly competitive.”

But the Mercer Island coach still wants his team to be able to push its opponents and give other teams a more challenging match.

“I want them to be able to master the fundamentals of this sport because a lot of them don’t have that background,” he said. “They’re just starting now as freshmen, sophomores, juniors, even some seniors that just joined the team and want to be in a fun sport and they lack the basic footwork, the basic grip, how to swing and the basic strokes. That’s what we want to do. We want to not only bring awareness of badminton being a sport, but also teach them the fundamentals.”

Team captain Anna Chandler said one of the things she liked most about playing badminton was she could immediately see results from putting in hard work.

“This sport is fun because you can move up really easily,” she said. “You can improve and become a ranked player in the season easily if you work hard, so it’s not like everyone is set in their squad.”

Chandler said one of her goals for this year’s team would be to make it through the early rounds of their postseason tournament, which was echoed by her coach.

“I wouldn’t mind getting a couple more wins, we’d all like that,” Newton said. “But my goal for them is to raise their game, just raise their competitive level and from there, hopefully we’ll get some wins.”