SCHOOL CHAMPIONS 2013

On 11^th May 2013, the boys participated in their annual school tournament and for the first time tasted success with both bagging their titles in their age groups respectively. However, their victory was somewhat hollow because both the school’s No.1 player, Ooi Zhin Yang (12) and No. 2 player, Lee Jia Quan (11) did not participate. It was like a BWF Super Series without Lee Chong Wei and Lin Dan and the boys knew it.

The results of this tournament albeit much of a breeze for the boys, cement their positions as top 3 singles in their school team. Defending champion, Ooi Zhin Yang will not feature in the Harcroft school team anymore as he will eventually move to Secondary School next year.  

Until the next MSSD in 2014, Jia Quan is still at the helm while both brothers play second fiddle to him unless either one of the brothers can turn the cards on him in the coming months. In 2015, with Ryan and Jia Quan moving on the secondary school, Aaron remains firm favourite to lead the school team unless a worthy challenger emerge. 

Since Aaron has still a good two years ahead of him, we continue to prepare him for the state level. But first, he needs to build his resume by bagging more titles in the coming tournaments and we are all excited for him.

Boys Singles Under 10 Years Old

1^st Round   :      Aaron Wong (4K) vs Bye                       

2^nd Round  :      Aaron Wong (4K) vs Lew Seng Hee (4K)             21 - 2

Quarter Final :   Aaron Wong (4K) vs Tan Chen Hang (4U)            21 - 2

Semi Final    :   Aaron Wong (4K) vs Ryan Lim (4G)                    21 - 3

Final             :   Aaron Wong (4K) vs Tan Jae Yang (4P)              21 - 11

Boys Singles Under 11 Years Old

1^st Round  :       Ryan Wong (5G) vs bye

2^nd Round :       Ryan Wong (5G) vs Ng Yu Xuan (5H)                   21 - 0

3^rd Round  :       Ryan Wong (5G) vs Albert Lee (5P)                     21 - 5

Quarter Final :   Ryan Wong (5G) vs Ding Koon Yeat (5G)             21 - 3

Semi Final    :   Ryan Wong (5G) vs Owen Lee (5K)                      21 - 4

Final             :   Ryan Wong (5G) vs Wong Yen Chik (5E)             21 - 11

LADANG HARCROFT SCHOOL SELECTION

Last Sunday, the school conducted a selection match at MBA to rank the school players for the MSSD tournaments coming up in April 2013. We were anxious because, it has been quite a while since we last saw 1st rank - Ooi Zhin Yang and 2nd rank - Lee Jie Quan, whereby both were training in Kelab Wira Tangkis Putra Jaya for one year now. Zhin Yang is now a Putra Jaya state player and is competing in the National Junior Circuit with Jie Quan following his footsteps closely. I explained to the boys the reality of what they were up against and I can only advice them to give a good fight and snatch as many points as possible from their opponents who were favourites to win.

Both Ryan and Aaron cleared their preliminary rounds with ease and were inevitably drawn to play with the Wira Tangkis duo. Aaron was up to play with Zhin Yang next which was a much awaited match by the coaches. Both exchanged base line shots testing each other out. As the match progressed, the difference was clear as the state player gradually pulled away with his superior finesse. Aaron tried hard to come back and managed only occasional winners for himself but it was not enough. His shot making was still not refined enough and committed too many unforced errors. Zhin Yang won the contest 30 – 14.

Next up, was Ryan vs. Jie Quan and this was a closely fought match. Jie Quan clearly had better reach whereas Ryan was often half step too short. However, Ryan could match Jie Quan in shuttle placement forcing Jie Quan to make dramatic dives, but Ryan still lacked speed and explosiveness in his game. Although Jie Quan made many erratic errors, Ryan could not close in on him and conceded the match 22 - 30.  

In the doubles, the school has paired the boys up for second doubles behind Zhin Yang and Jie Quan as the obvious first ranked. Even though the boys lost to their better opponents, we took heart that both Ryan & Aaron has come quite a long way since their last ranking match in July 2012 and many could see their progress since then. The boys team has a good reason for optimism since they have a state player in Ooi Zhin Yang to lead them.

Unofficial Boys Singles Under 12

1)       Ooi Zhin Yang (12)

2)       Lee Jie Quan (11)

3)       Aaron Wong (10) Rsv

4)       Ryan Wong (11) Rsv

Unofficial Boys Doubles Under 12

1)       Ooi Zhin Yang (12) / Lee Jie Quan (11)

2)       Ryan Wong (11) / Aaron Wong (10)

3)       Wong Yen Chik (11) / Tan Jie Yang (10) Rsv

Crash-Course Training in July

3rd Place 2012 School Tournament

One week after Inter-MBA, their school Ladang Harcroft held a closed tournament in MBA. Aaron advanced up to 4^th round where he lost to Lee Jie Quan (Std 4) who was vastly superior in skill and was trashed. Jie Quan eventually became runners-up. Ryan fared slightly better fought his way up to semi-final and was defeated by Ooi Zhin Yang (Std 5) who had vastly advanced skills and was no match for him. Zhin Yang became the school’s Champion. 

We decided to take the boys off the MBA training schedules temporarily and attempted to train them ourselves. We believed that we could give the boys much better one-to-one focus compared with MBA whereby the coaches had to oversee a group of kids with diluted attention.

So we started training the boys at our usual Bt Jalil badminton weekend games. We drilled them with lots of singles stroke play and motivational talks. We practiced net play, shadow for footwork and pointed out where they should place shuttle during sparring. During the night, I supplemented with soft skill drills at home to familiarize them with correct grip, sweet spot and racquet control.

After just one short month, the results were very positive. We could see Aaron benefitted more due to his attentiveness. He started to use cross net drops and overhead drops which caught me by surprise. 

At the end of July, their school called for a selection to form a school badminton team. They needed to prepare for MSSM inter-school games in early 2013.

Our boys played knock-out games and advanced right up to top four. Ryan again met with Ooi Zhin Yang and just couldn’t cope with his sharpness. Again Aaron met Lee Jie Quan, still could not get the better of his more powerful opponent. We have been told that both the No.1 & No.2 ranked boys trained daily at MBA long before our boys got started.

Although Ryan and Aaron lost to the much better players respectively, we could see that they have more variety in their shots now after overcoming the rest of the field. The school coach paid particular attention to Aaron since he had 2 more good years ahead of him to represent his school. There were glimpses of moves Aaron made that had the potential to go far.

The school coach selected the top 10 students for the school team and urged us to continue with the subsidized training under the MBA school plan. We were so upbeat by the results at the school selection that I decided to extend another month of private training stint with the boys.

SJKC Ladang Harcroft Badminton Team