Ong speaking to the participants of the bowling instructors course at Megalanes Sarawak E-Mart Batu Kawa recently.
KUCHING: Sarawak will not wait for national sports bodies to come and conduct coaching and technical courses in the state.
This is because the courses organised for Sarawak are limited and it will take a longer time for it to produce more coaches, technical officials and sports administrators.
“Take for example, if you go for one sport, say badminton. They will focus on each state and if you hold a course in Perak, all the other states can just take a bus to Perak and attend. If there are nine courses, all of them can attend.
“But as for Sarawak and Sabah, we have to fly over there and we can only send limited people to attend the course as it is very costly for us,” The Sarawak Sports Corporation CEO Dr Ong Kong Swee he explained.
“The Sarawak Sports Corporation (SSC), with assistance from the Ministry of Tourism, Arts, Culture, Youth and Sports and the support of the Sarawak State Sports Council, will be organising more courses to produce more coaches, technical officials and sports administrators. With more coaches, we are able to get a bigger pool of talented athletes who can be trained to shoulder the state’s challenge at national or international competitions,” he told The Borneo Post after opening the bowling instructors course at Megalanes Sarawak E-Mart Batu Kawa on Thursday.
Fifty-five participants, with the majority of them teachers from 25 schools in Kuching, are attending the course which ends today.
It is jointly organised by Amateur Tenpin Bowling Association of Malaysia (Abas) and Megalanes Sarawak and supported by SSC.
“We are focusing on the Key Result Area (KRA) 6 where we want to create more quality coaches which are not only for the elite athletes but also for the centres of excellence and centres of development. To create more coaches, we need to have module courses of certain standard and with more coaches, they can create more athletes and the base will become bigger,” Ong added.
He said SSC is trying to create something of its own and they have been conducting various courses since early this year.
“Even though the certification is not recognised by the states in West Malaysia, they are recognised by Sarawak as the coaches will serve the state, not other states.
“We have the budget from the ministry to push for the courses to be organised. Apart from the coaching and technical courses, we are also looking at organising sports administrators courses.”
Ong said SSC will be conducting the OCM Sports Administrators Programme in September.
“We also want to conduct courses for sports administrators from all sports associations so that the running of the respective associations will be more efficiently done. Presently, almost all sports associations do not have their five-year plan or set their annual budget,” he disclosed.
Meanwhile, on the bowling instructor course, Ong regarded it as a good course.
“This is a good initiative taken by Abas in the move to produce more bowling coaches and it is a module done by the association and its sports experts and we can endorse it as one of SSC sports specifics coaching manuals.
“In the near future, we are expecting the set up of sports coaching modules of our own from introductory to Level I, II and III and our sports coaching scheme which is more systematic and the coaches will be better paid,” Ong said.