Ariel's first stop is a club with nine tables and more than a dozen badminton courts.
One of her numerous personal coaches is waiting to begin the workout.
Their shots zip back and forth with blurry speed. Ariel never stops moving, bouncing, trying to stay in position so that, even on wide balls, she can maintain a compact, powerful swing.
The coach exhorts her in Chinese, insisting that she transition quickly from offense to defense, adapting to the nuances of each point.
"Good players are trickier," Ariel says. "They can change their tactics fast."
The drills continue for two hours -- she banks as many as 25 to 30 hours of training each week -- before it comes time for another session with a different coach at a club down the road. Along the way, she stops to wolf down a turkey sub.
"Two of my many talents," she says with a grin. "Eating and sleeping."
An early prediction
Ariel's mother- Xin Jiang, grew up in the Henan province of China.
Later, she had immigrated to the U.S. and married a fellow computer engineer from Taiwan named Michael Hsing. They frequented a table tennis club near their home.
One night they could not find a baby-sitter and brought along their 7-year-old daughter. Ariel showed immediate potential, catching the eye of the club's coach and prompting a brash prediction from her mother.
On the drive home, Jiang told her husband: "When Ariel makes the Olympics, we will pay for the grandparents to go but what about the other relatives?"
Michael Hsing recalls: "I thought she was a little crazy."
But within a few years, Ariel began rising through the junior ranks, developing a "two-wing attack" -- hitting hard from both the forehand and backhand sides -- as she traveled the nation and then the world to compete.
Ariel enrolled at the private Valley Christian High last year. A counselor watches her shift focus the instant she steps on campus.
"Usually you see people go one way or the other, all sports or all academics," Erik Ellefsen says. "I've never seen a student like this before."
The change is so complete that classmates were startled when a documentary crew recently followed her around. Many had no idea she was an elite athlete. They just thought of her as a smart kid who misses a lot of school.
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