I am not, as you might have guessed from how I look physically, your consummate sports star. I resemble the run of the mill kenyan long distance runner when it comes to physique, but ask me to run a fraction of the distance they can and I will most likely be found passed out. Nevertheless, I am not without my share of sporting activity. The thing to note is that they have all been pursued with more or less the same intensity and commitment - that is, casually and recreationally.
Any good Singaporean child, among many other things, would have done these 2 things: learn to play the piano at Yamaha, and if you stayed in a condo like I did, learn to play tennis by an overpaid ex-national player coach under the evening floodlights in the comfort of your estate's tennis courts. I did both, and with regards to the latter, took these become-a-potential-Pat-Cash lessons very seriously, because I found it much more fun than the other athletic lesson we are all put through as condo dwellers - swimming. Naturally, this led to me joining Mini Tennis in when I was 10. I faithfully attended school training, gradually in place of those condo lessons as my age moved into the double digits. This lasted for all of Primary 4, and I took up new stuff in Primaries 5 and 6, the computer and science clubs respectively. That's it for the adolescent years.
In my early teens, my time was spent in the pursuit of the arts, both performing and communicative, leaving me little space to indulge in school team sport. This is the point where one either becomes a sportsman or not. I mean yes, I did try out for tennis and could have gone down that road, but I didn't have that same passion in me I suppose. Around this time though, I picked up squash and table tennis, adding to my racket sport arsenal. The beginning of badminton is far more nebulous, though with it my sporting identity was, as it is now, complete - I am a racket sports person, definitely much more than a team game person. By virtue of who my closest friends were, I also picked up rugby, both contact and touch, though the latter is the most recent variety I've played just at last year's end in Bintan with these same friends. My mid teens were marked by putting in time for my racket sports, and I took little else of physical education seriously. In my late teens, the need for a NAPFA silver meant 4 months of a little more regimented exercise, though after that it was back to the routine of racket sports.
Now at the tail end of my teens, I have since picked up frisbee as a recurring activity. This afternoon we, church folk who began this as an outreach outlet, were pitted against a school team from TP. Not the best school team, but a school team nonetheless. It was an experience indeed. I've not played any competitive sport, at least I can't remember any inter-school-inter-whatever matches from my primary school days, and definitely none after that. In racket sports, you alone determine the outcome, and there are 2 ways to do that - independently win points, or force your foe's errors. There are similarities when it comes to a team sport like frisbee, but there are also other things I've never really fully appreciated because I've never been so immersed in such an extended experience. Things like team dynamics. As a debater, school and professional, I know what it means both contextually and universally, but the spirit of sport, as athletes will testify, is something else altogether.
So in all my history I have not known what it is like to put myself out there so much, max-ing out all that is in my physical fitness strength for a sport to the point of ignoring pain and wanting nothing more than to sleep immediately after. Witnessing it today reminded me of this, and I struggle to remember witnessing it before, though I must have, seeing as I have as many athletic friends as I should. My pursuits, debate in particular, have made me a familiar bedfellow with drills, training, late nights, long days and mental tire you could not imagine. But truth be told, it has never been a matter of finding within myself that bank of stamina for that one more hard run that will matter for the outcome of a point. Do I feel any less for it? Certainly not, but it does mean I am aware of what I've not experienced, and actually want to. No better than to have started recently I suppose, though I know it will never be with the same sheer intensity of the sportsmen amongst us. And I'm OK with that.
