Young athletes head for M'sia
By James Kon

Group photo of the athletes and officials prior to their departure to Malaysia.

A large contingent of 40 young Brunei athletes and officials from the Brunei Sports School left for Malaysia yesterday morning to attend training sessions and friendly matches in Bandar Penawar Johore Sport School and Bukit Jalil Sport School in Malaysia.

The contingent for the trip, which is scheduled to last for about one week, is led by Awg Zaman bin Hj Gapar, the Acting Principal of the Brunei Sports School. Awg Zaman said in an interview that this would be the first time a large number of young athletes would be heading overseas. He also hoped that after the training and practice matches, the officials would be able to identify any areas weakness in the teams and take action to improve the overall team performance of the teams.

The athletes who are participating in the overseas training course include footballers, badminton players and Sepak Takraw athletes.

Among the several aims of the overseas training session and friendly matches are to expose the officials and coaches to the management system and training programmes that had been successfully implemented in other sports schools overseas, to take a closer observation of the planning, implementation, assessment of academic and sports programmes as well as to increase the experience of coaches and students and to strengthen ties with officials of the overseas sport schools.

The Brunei Sport School's past achievement in football include Runner-Up in the Brunei Darussalam Schools' Under-15 Football Championship and Winner and Runner-Up for the Youth and Sport Department's 5-a-side Football Tournament 2005. In the sport of badminton, the Sports School participated in DST's Secondary Schools Badminton Tournament and the Under-18 Badminton Tournament during the School Sports Festival 2004.

Courtesy of Borneo Bulletin