Our Badminton Background

It would be good to introduce our little family of 5.

Ryan, our eldest was born in the year of the horse. He will be in primary 5 in 2013. Being an extrovert, he has this magnetic charisma whereby kids tend to follow him. Pompous and cunning, he has a tendency to “keep face” in the presence of his peers. He inherited a stubborn streak from his father and will find any short cuts he can in all of his endeavors. We noted his slow progress in training as he always has an excuse for everything. However we can see a leadership trait in him which hopefully will bring out the best out of him in tournament environment.

Aaron, on the other hand is the opposite of his brother. One year younger than Ryan, Aaron, a goat, is the quiet type always choose to remain in the background. When he is left alone, he would just idle away. He is mechanically inclined and most of his toys were either damaged or dissembled to pieces. However, he is loveable and is the apple of his granny's eyes. Aaron fortunately has good attitude in following instructions which perhaps explained why he had benefitted more in our personal training.

Kiera - Project 2030

Our little girl, Kiera is only 2-1/2 years old and is as talkative as her mother. Sensitive and curious, she mirrors her mother’s character. Hopefully she could follow her mother’s footstep to become a top shuttler in our country one day.

My wife’s childhood since she was 9 years old has always been centered on competitive badminton. She and her elder brother represented their school, district and Negeri Sembilan state at junior level. At the height of her game, she was among the top four in Malaysian junior level. She was then coached by Ng Chin Chai, currently BAM’s honorary secretary. Among the prominent names from Negeri Sembilan which she mingled with were current women doubles head coach Rosman Razak, former world No. 2 singles Yong Hock Kin and also former world No. 1 Chinese singles, Chen Hong. Internationally, she represented her country for Asian Inter-University Badminton Games. After graduating, she chose a different path for her career but continued playing badminton whenever she could.

Me? Unlike my wife, I am just an average player but she has rubbed off much of her badminton passion on our family. I am also a keen follower of Datuk Lee Chong Wei. Like many others, I have joined ranks in lamenting BAM’s failure to produce more top shuttlers to replace Datuk LCW. Will my boys replace Datuk LCW? Very unlikely but who knows what will happen in future. We will endeavour to prepare our boys to the best of our abilities and if they are good enough, they will make it to state level. Hopefully they can be admitted into Bukit Jalil Sports School. That will be our immediate target and we will see how it goes from there.