KUCHING: In the absence of a sports school, the Sarawak Hockey Association (SHA) through the stewardship of Sarawak State Sports Council (MSNS) chief coach C. Sivasubramaniam has drawn up a plan to hold a lot of development, especially on youth development.
With the help of Sarawak Sports Corporation (SSC) their emphasis is on the Under 16 to have a training camp during school holidays.
The recent inclusion of hockey into Suksar was a shot in the arm for hockey development.
Although the matches were played on grass fields, which highlighted the lack of up-to-date facilities in the state, it was still a step in the right direction.
“We want to identify players at the grassroot as we concentrate on those on the under 12, 14 and 16 age groups by holding coaching clinics in their schools throughout Sarawak, including the interior regions. If we do coaching clinics, we can identify them so that we have a pool of talents which we will put in our data bank so that they can be called up for future development,” said Sivasubramaniam.
“In the absence of a sports school or project school, our alternative is to do coaching clinics and organise training camps at the schools.
“But doing so, I feel we have not even done 50 percent of the job to make Sarawak hockey among the top states in the country.”
“We face a lot of obstacles, especially from headmasters who don’t encourage activities like allowing their students to go out and take part in competitions,” said Sivasubramaniam.
He cited the example of SMK Tebakang where students made up about 70 percent of the Sarawak Sukma team but now there are hardly any more players.
The school was active in the sport as the former principal and teachers were encouraging the students to take up hockey and Siva frequently visited the schools to do coaching clinics as the school was a development centre supported by MSNS.
Siva said there is an abundance of talents in Sarawak but due to the lack of facilities and obstacles faced by the hockey association to help in development, the sport cannot recover its past glory.
“We have a lot of schools playing but the facilities are poor. Only SMK Paku has a proper astroturf while the rest are played on small tennis or basketball courts,” he lamented.
For hockey to improve, the coach stressed on continuity in the development of the game.
