THE TIMES ALL-COUNTY BADMINTON PLAYERS OF THE YEAR : Estancia’s Doan, Costa Mesa’s Luong O.C. Players of Year : Girls: Senior has moved into the upper echelon by devoting herself to the sport.

COSTA MESA — For the last several years, Costa Mesa senior Linda Luong was known as a talented badminton player who couldn’t quite crack the upper echelon of Southern Section girls’ singles players. This season, however, Luong, The Times Orange County girls’ badminton player of the year, and San Marino’s Lilly Chen pretty much owned the franchise.

After several years of being frustrated by Diamond Bar’s Amy Fu in the early rounds of the Southern Section individual singles championships at Cypress College, Luong (46-5) reached the championship final last month.

There, she was defeated by Chen, 11-5, 11-9, after a leg cramp slowed her in the second round while leading, 8-6. Chen (48-0) was the only player to defeat Luong this season.

And it might have been Luong’s old nemesis, Fu, who graduated last year, who helped her to join the elite.

“I brought in (Fu) as an assistant coach this year and she helped (Luong) a lot to get better,” said Tom Carroll, Costa Mesa badminton coach. “Linda was always very friendly with the top players, and Amy gave her a lot of encouragement.”

Luong, who graduates this month with a 4.1 grade-point average, also credits her improvement to focusing on badminton this year. Already the top girls’ tennis player at the school, Luong had also been a member of the varsity basketball team the last two years.

“I was more interested in basketball and tennis,” Luong said. “But wouldn’t you know the year I didn’t play basketball, we went all the way to the State finals. But I would’ve missed a lot of badminton though.”

Luong has no regrets about her decision to concentrate on badminton.

“I love the sport,” she said. “My coaches (Fu and Carroll) told me if I worked hard, I would get much farther. I wanted to reach the finals. I was kind of tired of getting beat by seniors.”

In spite of her court rivalry with Chen, Luong and the San Marino senior, who played on a free-lance basis because her school has no team, have become good friends.

“We played each other in every tournament,” Luong said, “and we’ve become very good friends. What I like about this sport is that I make a lot of good friends. We’re supposed to be enemies, but I root for (Chen) when I’m not playing her. I hope to play on some tournament doubles teams with Lilly this summer.”

Luong has enrolled at UC San Diego for the fall semester.

“Oh, I’ll have to concentrate on academics,” Luong said when asked about her athletic ambitions. “I’ll be majoring in chemistry or chemical engineering and see where I go after that. I’ll play intramural sports mostly to stay in shape.”