KUCHING: A total of 17 teams are to compete in the state-level AirAsia- Badminton Association of Malaysia (BAM) National Youth League Badminton Championship 2017 starting from October 26 through to October 29.
Assistant Minister of Youth and Sports, Datuk Snowdan Lawan said this tournament is organised by BAM with the cooperation of the Sarawak Badminton Association (SBA).
It involves12 men and five women teams and is held at the SBA Badminton Hall, here, he said at a press conference in conjunction with the launch of the state-level AirAsia-BAM National Youth League Badminton Championship at a leading hotel here on Wednesday.
Snowdan firmly said, his side is committed to focusing on development programmes from grassroots level.
“With this league, we are hoping to find juniors in badminton sports in the effort to produce world-class athletes. “Besides, we do not want to rely solely on individuals, thus we need to look for initiatives to find new talents,” he said. The Balai Ringin Assemblyman added that the state government is serious in realising Sarawak’s desire to become a sports force and powerhouse in Malaysia in the future.
On the tournament, there are two main categories contested namely team as well as individual men and women. The tournament aims to discover new talent and Terengganu became the first state followed by Sabah before being continued in Sarawak as the third location of the championship.
Meanwhile, President of BAM, Datuk Seri Mohamad Norza Zakaria said the tournament was targeting the participation of more than 5,000 of students under 18 years of age from more than 1,000 schools across the country. According to him, this tournament will begin at the school level in each state before the best will compete at the national-level to win a place to represent the country.
“The league that started in September this year through to January 2018 is the idea of BAM President using the Thomas Cup and Uber Cup team format,” he said.
He further said that the final stage of the tournament is scheduled to take place on 4 and 5 January 2018. Also present were President of Sarawak Badminton Association (SBA) Tan Sri Datuk Amar Abdul Aziz Husain and Director of Sarawak State Sports Council Dr Ong Kong Swee. The best and easiest way to generate HTML tags for your website is using HTML cheatsheet .
