ARCADIA — The 2025 SoCal Regional Bton Invitational took place Saturday, and Rancho Bernardo High School’s Justine Yong made it one to .
Yong advanced to the regional championship match for the second consecutive year, where she took on the same person — Ella Mak of Hacienda Heights Glen A. Wilson High School — that she faced in 2024.
Mak won 22-20, 21-15, a year after beating Yong in straight sets.
The disappointing ending capped a strong performance from Yong, the CIF San Diego Section’s girls singles championship. To begin the day, Yong defeated Ramya Saravanan from Redlands 21-8, 21-9. She then took down Jalees Yu of Arcadia 21-16, 21-11 before beating Angela Wang of Walnut High 11-21, 21-18, 21-17 to get to the championship.
In mixed doubles, Del Norte’s Mihir Thaha and Meghana Nishant placed third after taking down Arcadia’s William Huang and Lilian Gu in straight sets, 21-9, 21-14.
Thaha and Nishant teamed up to win the section title last week to earn a first-round bye. The Nighthawks duo defeated South Pasadena’s Anson Fong and Kiana Lee in straight sets 21-8, 21-5. However, Thaha and Nishant were unable to keep their momentum going, losing in the semifinals to Arcadia’s Lorin Leung and Chloe Kai in three sets.
Thaha and Nishant lost the first set 21-18 before winning the second set 21-13, setting up a winner-take-all third set. The duo came up short, losing 21-9 and heading to the third-place match.
Del Norte took another third-place finish courtesy of Pradyun Gowda in boys singles. Despite losing his semifinal match to Diamond Bar’s Jaden Zhou 27-25, 19-21, 16-21, Gowda responded in the third-place game, defeating Alhambra’s Cody Duan, 21-19, 5-21, 21-14.
In boys doubles, Scripps Ranch’s Vansh Vinod and Sean Chen lost their opening match to Cypress’ Christopher Chi and Mikey Kadowaki, 19-21, 21-16, 19-21.
They rallied in the consolation bracket, winning all three of their matchups to claim fifth place. Then in the consolation championship game, Vinod and Chen beat Torrey Pines’ Jason Xu and Ricky Xu in straight sets, 21-16, 21-18.
