Silent Concentration

“Whack!” “Thwack!” Explosive sounds ring out when racket hits shuttlecock at high speed. During the national ranking tournament held in August 2021, as the shots flew back and forth between elite squad players, their strokes whistled like flying shells.

Competitors with normal hearing can judge the speed of an incoming shot from its sound, and return with a drop shot or lift shot. But although Shen Yan-ru is constantly in “silent” mode, she responds equally quickly, and there is no visible difference in her playing form.

This is what she has achieved through long years of unrelenting effort, during which she experienced many disappointments and dark times.

Overcoming setbacks to define herself

During the final match of the first ranking tourna­ment of 2019, despite her wealth of playing experience, Shen wept at a competition for the first time.

During the ranking tournaments in 2018, she was unable to break into the round of 16, and was washed out of the events. In 2019, by a supreme effort she made it to the semifinals, but was on the verge of ­collapse.

To prepare for the ranking tournament, Shen had already trained to the point where she could auto­matic­ally respond to any shot from an opponent with the most appropriate countershot. But because she demanded so much of herself, she spent a lot of time on refining her backhand and net shot actions, and this over­concentra­tion on relatively minor details left her mentally and physically exhausted.

When it came to the last two matches, although she was aware that she needed to win just one more match to be elevated to the elite squad, she was, as she describes it, “like an out-of-control robot, unable to do what I had done in training. The more anxious I got, the narrower my field of vision became, and the more indecis­ive my movements. I wondered why the match was going on for so long.” In fact the match was over in less than 30 minutes.

After this defeat, Shen made an in-depth personal reassessment and prepared for the next round of competi­tion. Having made her adjustments, during the second ranking tournament she was completely relaxed. Even when facing better players than herself in matches lasting over an hour, she remain determined to outdo herself, and succeeded in defeating competitors who like herself were seeded players. She became the first ever hearing-impaired player to make the national elite squad, real­iz­ing a dream that she had once thought in­conceiv­able.

Hearing-impaired badminton player Shen Yan-ru is focused on training for the Deaflympics to be held in Brazil in 2022.

Competition to get through dark times

Shen was born profoundly deaf in one ear and with a moderate hearing impairment in the other, and only said “Mama” for the first time when she was three years old. She found that even with a hearing aid she often couldn’t hear clearly, and sounds became distorted. Worried that others would look down on her, she became highly introverted and was very shy about speaking.

When she was in fifth grade, her mother, who had been an athlete in the Taiwan Area Games, encouraged her to join the badminton team at Shih-Hu Elementary School in Kaohsiung.

Shen’s mother, Wang Mei-ching, says that initially she wasn’t expecting her daughter to win champion­ships, but simply hoped that sports would help her to interact more with other people. In junior high school Shen entered a sports-oriented curriculum track, but it turned out that when playing badminton, because she couldn’t hear the sound of the other player’s racket hitting the shuttlecock, she would only move her feet when she saw the shuttlecock coming, so that she was always slow off the mark. Though Wang worried about this, she didn’t know what she could do to help.

But Shen found that she could focus better on the action when playing without her hearing aid. With determina­tion and resilience, she concentrated on her footwork and gradually worked out a multifaceted approach to playing.

In 2012, Shen represented Taiwan at the Asia Pacific Deaf Games in Seoul. She says: “I realized that I could represent hearing-impaired athletes by competing abroad, and that in this way I could do my bit for my country by playing badminton.” This sense of honor became her motiva­tion to carry on competing.

In 2015, Shen represented deaf athletes from Taiwan when she competed in Bulgaria at the 1st World Youth Deaf Badminton Championships and the 4th World Deaf Badminton Championships.

In over a month of competition, Shen played in ­women’s singles, women’s doubles, mixed doubles, and team events. She played an average of four to five matches a day, and over the course of the two champion­ships, each lasting about two weeks, she played more than 100 matches in all. “During these events I didn’t think about anything else. The more I played, the more focused I got. I played and played until sometimes I even forgot who my opponent was.” Shen laughs as she relates the story.

Shen, who stayed dialed in right through the final shot, won two gold medals for women’s singles in these inter­national tournaments, setting a new milestone by becoming the first person on the Chinese Taipei deaf badminton team to win two gold medals. “It was at these contests that I became aware that I could achieve at such a high level.” For Shen, who was playing in her first world champion­ships, the event helped her get through a dark time and gave her a professional goal to continue to train for.

Shen Yan-ru and Paralympic badminton player Fan Jen-yu analyze each other’s skills following a practice match.

Overcoming her own boundaries

Shen set a precedent by being the first hearing-­impaired person ever to become a student in the Depart­ment of Sports Training Science for Ball Sports at National Taiwan Sport University. After competing in the 2017 Deaflympics in Turkey, she was ranked as the world’s number one hearing-impaired badminton player.

NTSU professor and badminton head coach Chi Shyh-ching observes that Shen is a pro-active athlete with great capacity for absorbing what she is taught, and is an all-round player who can attack or defend. With formal training 22 hours per week she became a member of Taiwan’s elite national badminton squad in her junior year in university, and at the 5th World Deaf Badminton Championships, held in Taiwan in 2019, she won gold medals in women’s singles and women’s ­doubles, as well as a bronze in the team event.

After starting university, the biggest change in Shen’s life was that she wanted to break through her self-­limitations and open herself up to new experiences. In her junior year she joined the school’s “friendship ambas­sador” club, wearing a qipao to greet guests at formal school occasions, and she also went to nightclubs with her friends. After the World Deaf Badminton Championships, she unwound by traveling by herself to Indonesia, where she met up with friends she had met during competitions.

Due to Covid-19, the 2021 Deaflympics have been postponed until 2022, when they will be held in Brazil. Shen Yan-ru is focusing on intensive training and prepara­tion at school. Shen, who is especially adept at drop shots and can rapidly adjust her strategy during matches, says she will continue to play on in hopes of achieving victories in all the tournaments that she has set her sights on.