Newsday's Athlete of the Week is Howard Zheng of Jericho boys badminton

Howard Zheng didn’t recognize his opponent. He thought he had played him in the past. Regardless, he knew he had just played him in the first set of the first singles match at the Long Island badminton championships, held earlier this month. But, the second set was so different than the first, he couldn’t be sure.

Half Hollow Hills’ Rajueer Gujrac had fought back from a one-sided first set loss to take the second, 21-17. The difference in the two sets shook Zheng’s confidence.

“Winning comfortably in the first set really caught me off-guard,” said Zheng, who took the first one 21-6.  “In the second set, (Gujrac) played way more aggressively. That got me a little nervous because he wasn’t playing like that in the first set.”

Zheng regrouped, realized what had gone wrong in the middle stanza, and took the third, 21-18 to wrap up the victory. It was part of Jericho’s 7-0 win over Half Hollow Hills, notching a championship for the Jayhawks. Zheng, a junior, is Newsday’s Athlete of the Week.

“Going into the third set, I was definitely frustrated with making so many mistakes,” Zheng said. “But I told myself to stay focused, be confident, and get one point at a time.”

It may be one of the oldest clichés in sports — one (fill in the black) at a time — but it really helped Zheng, who realized he was more concerned with the gravity of winning a Long Island title, and less about the individual points in the second set. That thinking was just too broad, leading to unforced errors.

“Every time I lost a point due to an unforced error, I would calm myself down and think about, ‘was my shot bad or was his shot just too good?’ Zheng said of his third set mentality. “I’d just focus on hitting it in.”

‘Hitting it in’ meant repositioning his backhand corner shot.

“Howard’s backhand shots were mostly down the line and just a little too short,” Jericho coach Mark Burkowsky said. “Howard’s very good, he can drop and clear from that position, but he was hitting midcourt shots back and (Gujrac,) was taking advantage by hitting hard crosses and catching Howard out of position . . . We spoke between games two and three about not playing that backhand down the line. But, if he does put you back in that corner, try and play that backhand cross court.”

Burkowsky said that, by changing the shot placement, Zheng was able to get back into position a lot easier and, in turn, bring Gujrac out of it.

“He doesn’t give up,” Burkowsky said. “He plays until the last point every single match.”