The Volleyball Association of Singapore (VAS) has been closely monitoring the COVID-19 situation both in Singapore and around the world. We have also been in daily contact with SportSG, while staying up to date with all the latest updates from Ministry of Health (MOH) and Ministry of Education (MOE). The health and wellbeing of our athletes, coaches, officials and affiliated club teams are our number one priority as we navigate this challenging situation.
Here are the measures we have taken thus far:
1. Events
a. On 6 February 2020, we first made the difficult decision to postpone the National U-19 Volleyball Championship
just before DOSRCON was upgraded to Orange, to reduce the risks for our younger student athletes.
b. On 25 March 2020, we also announced the postponement of the inaugural Singapore Volleyball League (SVL) that was scheduled to be commence on 4 April 2020. This is another difficult decision as we understand the fraternity has been looking forward to the SVL.
2. National Team Trainings
a. On 6 February 2020, we have suspended all U-17 National Training squad trainings to ensure we protect our more vulnerable athletes and to ensure we adhere to the MOE advisory to prevent inter-mingling of students across schools.
b. Additional precautionary measures were put in place for our athletes from the senior teams such as temperature taking, contact tracing protocol and regular handwashing during training breaks.
c. On 12 March 2020, we imposed a travel ban on all national athletes for non-essential travel out of Singapore. For those who need to travel, they must serve a 14-day Leave of Absence from all national trainings. This is to ensure we limit the risks of imported infections to our national athletes and coaches.
d. On 26 March 2020, we have also stopped all youth in the National team from training and informed our affiliated clubs to stop all youth training in line with MOH’s and SportSG’s advisories.
3. VAS Office
a. The VAS office has also gone into business continuity plan where they are taking turns to work from home whilst ensuring the continued operation of the VAS office. All staff are monitoring their temperature twice daily.
b. We also had our monthly VAS Council meeting via video conferencing this week and this will continue for the near future. With the help of technology, we continued to operate at 100% capacity whilst reducing the level of social contacts within the VAS office.
We want to take this opportunity to acknowledge our clubs, coaches and officials who over the past weeks have been proactive with the implementation and adoption of all the MOH requirements and the social distancing measures that have come into play. Our clubs, coaches and officials have been extremely patient as we continued to fine-tune and make alternative plans for our local events with the changes in the precautionary advisories.
We support and adhere to the new guidelines to keep Singapore Volleyball safe and playing our part to keep Singapore safe. We encourage our clubs to abide by all the guidelines outlined by SportSG and MOH when it comes to the tighter safe distancing measures around limiting gatherings to 10 or less if they remain open. VAS will be looking at ways where we can continue to connect with the community and support our athletes, coaches and officials during this time. Stay tuned and we will keep you updated. We encourage the volleyball fraternity to remain vigilant in their daily lives and continue to adhere to the measurements as advised by the relevant authorities.
Thank you for your understanding and support in these challenging times. We pledge to do our part to fight the virus together with the nation. Stay healthy & safe and practise social distancing. We will tide through this trying time together.
Regards,
Ang Wei Neng
President, Volleyball Association of Singapore