1. Tell us more about yourself and your volleyball life.
After I ORD from National Service in 2004, I joined Sunset Bay in Sentosa Island as an event coordinator and was introduced to beach volleyball. As an event coordinator, I helped to organise beach volleyball corporate events, universities’ annual beach carnivals and local beach volleyball competitions. From these involvements, I started learning how to play and getting to know about the rules of the game.
The Volleyball Association of Singapore (VAS) organised the 1st Beach Volleyball Grassroot course in 2004 where I learnt more about the sport and how to coordinate competitions professionally. Subsequently in 2005, VAS organised the 1st Beach Volleyball National Referee Course and I also signed up for it. For our course practical evaluation, we were privileged to have teams from Switzerland, New Zealand, Australia, Hong Kong and Singapore participating in the Water Festival Beach Volleyball Competition, which was held just next to the Esplanade.
In 2017. I was given the opportunity to officiate at the 29th South East Asian Beach Volleyball Championship at Palawan Beach, Sentosa. In 2018, VAS organised the FIVB Beach Volleyball World Tour Singapore 2-star event at Siloso Beach Sentosa, and I had the opportunity to help out in the logistics and setting up of competition courts, and the honour to represent Singapore as a match official.
In October 2018, I was selected to attend Asian Beach Volleyball International Referee Candidate Course organised by the FIVB Development Centre in Bangkok, Thailand. Recently in April 2019, I was also given the opportunity to referee for AVC Women’s Beach Tour Can Tho Open.
For the past 8 years, I played beach volleyball every Sunday with my ‘Sunday Beach Kakis’ at Tanjong Beach and they are like family to me now!
2. What are you doing to contribute to volleyball in Singapore?
I am a huge advocate for beach volleyball enthusiasts to join our local official teams, either as a referee or scorer or both. You can get involved in local events such as the National Beach Series, or even overseas events such as FIVB World Tour, AVC Tour, etc.
I make it a point to pass my referee and official rules knowledge to local officials and players, to up-skill the local beach volleyball standards. I also make it share my overseas officiating experience with local officials and hope to see them going onto overseas assignments in the future.
Last but not least, I also help out with beach volleyball official training courses so we can have a healthy pipeline of beach volleyball officials in the future.
3. What will you do to encourage more volleyballers to contribute in their own wats, to give back the sport?
I encourage youngsters and volunteers to learn more about the sport and to join the beach volleyball family in coordinating events and competitions. There are many ways we can contribute to the sport, e.g. help with the organisation of beach volleyball clinics and community level events.
I also hope to see more continental and international beach volleyball events being showcased in Singapore so more people get interested in this exciting and beautiful sport.