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.



  

Humble Beginnings

Aaron (L) and Ryan (R)

Back in early 2011, my wife urged me to introduce badminton to both our boys. Ryan was 8 years old then and Aaron 1 year his junior. Being a member in Bt Jalil Golf & Country Club, we can enjoy many of the facilities the club has to offer including the 6 badminton courts garnished with epoxy flooring. All I had to do was to get into the web site and book for a court three days in advance. Our badminton then was leisurely more than anything else.

However, the boys loved the game very much. They would just jump into court and started hitting the shuttle to and fro between themselves. Both my wife and I felt that they should be guided further and started them by playing doubles. I can say they picked the game up quickly and that became our weekend workout for most of 2011. By November 2011, we needed to keep them occupied during their long school holidays. So, we decided to enroll them into Michael’s Badminton Academy in Puchong.

We learnt that MBA had a school plan whereby they subsidize students studying in primary Schools around Puchong area. I only had to pay RM50 per pax per month for a 2 hour per week session. The starters pack of RM100 include a free racquet with strings, MBA T-shirts and a water bottle. Kudus to MBA we could get our kids to take up badminton more seriously.