MALAYSIAN PRIVATE JUNIOR TOURNAMENTS

From the statistics of Aaron’s results, he has progressed well in his age group (under 10). My wife has been urging me to hunt for junior tournaments for him to participate in before he turns 10 on October 2013. Technically, he is still 9. 

SINGLES COMPETITION RECORDS
	RYAN				AARON
	PLAY	WIN	LOST	% wins	PLAY	WIN	LOST	% wins
Career	26	15	11	58%	27	19	8	70%
2013	4	1	3	25%	11	9	2	82%

When it comes to private junior tournaments, there are no lack of it throughout the year organized by various private academies and associations. In my opinion, the Kuala Lumpur Sports School Council tops them all in terms of size and quality of participation. Supported by commercial sponsors, they have attracted many serious youngsters and their parents alike from other states.

By and large, many of the private grassroots tournaments have rather poor publicity largely due to lack of funds. Much of these events are passed on by word of mouth by closed circles who are so called in the game. At least in the Klang Valley, many of these tournaments are freely accessible via internet which is where most of my source of information comes from. Sadly for outstation tournaments, these are not so readily available.

Unfortunately, the results of these private tournaments are largely ignored by BAM. The fate of the thousands of young hopefuls now rest on only two obscure routes. Firstly, via the traditional convention of representing their school team and gradually make their way up through district level (MSSD) and then state level (MSSN). Secondly, by scouting which is by no means an easy endeavour. Unless the child is an exceptional player like Goh Jin Wei from Penang, whereby Singapore was on the brink of snatching her away before BJSS offered her a place among the elite - otherwise only the privilege few and the influential may see better life.

Of all the junior tournaments I discovered so far, non have more significance than the one organized by Selangor Badminton Association (SBA) which is open to all budding shuttlers who resides in Selangor. In this tournament SBA will hand pick promising players to refill their talent warehouse as Selangor future state players.

Another point I like to point out in the hope that some good souls from BAM can make a change to this, is the lack of regulatory system in the Malaysian grassroots badminton development. I was to understand in Indonesia, all players (in every age group category) have a registered record of all the sanctioned tournaments they participated in. Each one earns points from the tournaments and is ranked thereby providing a transparent system for each player to be tracked on their progress ala BWF system. This also enables organizers to seed players accordingly for a fair tournament draw. Unless we see some light to this by high badminton authorities, our grassroots development will by and large remain a badminton backwater.

As for the boys, like the thousands who continue to remain hopeful will have no choice but to fend for themselves as long as they remain irrelevant by BAM. The irony is that the country has yet to find an answer to Datuk Lee Chong Wei’s successor when his days will come to pass – very soon.

Q1 2013 REVIEW

Despite all the schooling, extra curricular activities, academic tuitions & violin lessons, the boys were still able to put decent hours into the court for Q1 in 2013. This unfortunately was at the expense of some weekend masses and one Sunday school class skipped, which I am not proud of.

Despite the drop in court hours in Q1(2013) vs. Q4 (during 2012 year end holidays) which is expected, their attendance for training sessions were commendable despite their ultra tight schedules.

Year                                  2012                            2013

Month                   Oct       Nov       Dec      Jan       Feb       Mar

Court Hours           54         72       109        78         58        74

No. Sessions         22         25        36         30         24        27

Aaron continues to make rapid progress which we can see from the results of competitive matches he participated in 2013. See below ala BWF style.

	RYAN				AARON
	PLAY	WIN	LOST	% wins	PLAY	WIN	LOST	% wins
Career	25	15	10	60%	22	15	7	68%
2013	3	1	2	33%	6	5	1	83%

Ryan on the other hand, learning curve began leveling out. In one of my conversation with Coach Alex to address Ryan’s footwork, he suggested to inject short distance sprinting into his training diet. I took his advice and started the boys with 100m sprints at the Bukit Jalil Sports School track. In their first session, Aaron clocked a respectable 18 secs and Ryan about 2 secs slower. This may be early days but I was determined to break Ryan’s shackles even if I had to sacrifice my badminton matches every Thursdays (arrrgh).

The boys will be sitting for their first term school exams in April and we expect some loss in training hours. What we are more anxious is how they fair in their exams amidst all the hectic activities. We shall see.

DECEMBER REVIEW

December has broken yet another record having spent a total of 109 training hours vs (72 hours in November and 54 hours in October). Taking full advantage of the final holiday weeks, the on-court hours has spiked up since July 2012 as seen from the graph. We had to cancel the final two weeks of tuition classes to allow the boys keep pace with their daily training demands. We can sense the resoluteness of the coaches as they work tirelessly to contend with the feisty activities.

With all the hard hours ploughed in especially over the past six months, the boy’s badminton is beginning to come of age. We begin to see a prelude of what seem a semblance of a lithe badminton player with correct coordinated flair, especially Aaron – yet there is still plenty of work to be done.

As I mull over our new resolution, in the mean time, the boys will have to brace themselves for the new academic year in 2013. Our challenge will be to balance between their hectic tuition hours vs badminton training hours. I am cringing now and will have to take one day at a time.