Sports in School

I will be discussing about this topic through the perspective of a sports champion, which is also my CA role.

Sports is about winning competition

As a sports champion, I firmly believes that the main role of sports in schools is to train athletes to win competitions. In my opinion, the meaning of the word “sports” itself is just about competitions. Sports is an organized, competitive, and skillful physical activity requiring commitment and fair play. There are rules and regulations in sports that one has to follow. But why are there rules and regulations? This is to ensure that the players win fairly and only the player who deserves it can raise the trophy in his hands. The spirit of sports itself is about winning.

The purpose of sports is also to win. Let’s face the fact. We play sports because we want to win. We want to defeat the opposition and come first. Sport is about winning.

I think that school sports should continue to be an arena where athletes can challenge each other. School sports should be more competitive as competitions would encourage and motivate us to work hard and play the sports well. It is due to the desire for glory and honour that compels us to be serious about training and do our best when we play the sports. It is the fear of losing that hinders us to be lazy and not train up our skills. Hence, competitions are important as they raise our standards and we would strive for the better.

Elite sports in schools select the best players when they are recruiting members to the CCA. Why best players? This is because they would be able to win more competitions. They want highly potential players that could help them to win competitions. If not, they would be selecting them based on interest than skills instead. Hence, the main role of sports in schools, as well as in national context, is to train athletes to win competitions.

School sports should also be more competitive. Competition is good for us as without it we would not evolve, we could not better ourselves and world records could not be broken. Competitions push our limits and we will improve ourselves. Competition drives us forward and it is a way to strive for continuous improvement whereby we tries to do the best you can and doing even better next time.

Professional Coaches inculcate sportsmanship in players

Competition is harmless and most of the time it is, but there are times whereby competition becomes violence and we do not respect our opponents. An example is the incident on the students from Anglo-Chinese School (Independent) and Saint Andrews’ Secondary engaging in a major brawl after an ill-tempered rugby match. I think that this incident could have been prevented if they had developed sportsmanlike behaviour and were able to lose graciously. Hence, I strongly believe that players require professional coaching. Professionals would do a better job in imparting sporting skills and inculcating soft skills. These soft skills include teamwork, building of character and sportsmanship. Learning to become a graceful loser is certainly an important lesson.

Furthermore, these coaches would demand good sportsmanship from their players and this help shape the moral, ethical, and spiritual character of the players. Young players look up to their coaches as role models and are likely to observe their coaches’ behaviours. Professional coaches who show respect to officials and opponents before, during, and after games can truly expect their players to do the same.

Professional coaches engage the athletes in the sport, making it interesting for them and teach good sportsmanship through competitiveness. Therefore, I think that professional coaches should be hired so as to solve the problem of players being scared to lose and their resentment towards their rivals and opponents. This would then prevent incidents such as the conflict between ACS(I) and SAS.

Safety standards in Singapore School Sports

There also had been a spate of injuries and accidents that took place and the present safety standards of sports in Singapore was questioned. In my opinion, I think that it is inevitable that injuries happen and there are no safety lapses in sports in school. It was also reported that since 2007, the post-final celebrations of the B Division rugby have been incident-free. This shows that such injuries happened rarely, and these accidents occur as a low rate. There have been 54 games in the B Division Rugby Championship this season but such accidents happened in only two games. Such low percentage of the accidents happening shows that there are no serious safety lapses in school sports.

In conclusion, I think that the purpose of having sports in school is to train athletes to win competitions and for school sports to maintain as a platform for athletes to challenge each other. I also think that school sports should be more competitive and the players will be able to cope with professional coaching. They would have the right mind-set from such coaching. I also think that the current safety standards and practices do not have to be revamped.