Track Chalet at Coasta Sands

My previous blog posts has been talking about the chalet last friday but not in detail, so this post will fill up the part about it as I feel this should deserve it’s own post.

Track and field BBQ 3th October
So what other better way to ease up on the friday-weekend but to go for a chalet organized by the Track team? At least that kept me about a day away from work haha. Though organized by the seniors, everyone was invited to the rather small by cozy chalet at Pasir-ris coasta sands resort with about an estimated 30 people turning up for the BBQ night. Got the chance to try walking from Pasir-ris MRT to the venue with a cup of green tea for hydration after my NYAA prize presentation.

Got to meet some of the new trackers, especially those I know largely by face but do not have the chance to interact with them and catching up on the latest developments in SP track, considering the absence of most of the seniors in regular training since we graduated. Come to think about it, it had been about 1 year since I went for active training since last year’s FYP, man time do pass.

Track drifting apart?
Many of them are closing their first year in track, but it seems that the club was not as cohesive as what it was before, comprising of 3 coaches training different parts of the team which is though focuses on each member’s key area of the sport and diversifying rather than lumping everybody in for generic mass training, it seems that the club is now segregated in 3 distinctive “clans” who will most of the time only come together in the teams formed to represent SP.

True that the juniors will get the specific training they deserve, so the strong can improve with tailored training for them, but I find the atmosphere largely “selfish” now with everyman for themselves- which I find largely is against the spirit of sportsmanship and competition even which could be a breeding ground for internal conflicts. Not to mention the obvious gap between the juniors and seniors.

The thing lacking now a certain form of “track spirit” which is unique and had always been a uniting factor of track and field for generations.

Speaking from a graduate perspective, sometimes you need to come to realize that your time in track as a CCA won’t last forever, but the friendships you make and cherish over the years of training together which gives you the homely feel and belonging to the group, sometimes these can far outweigh what you win in competitions, let be even a medal in the IVP, after all that is just a medal- period, one which will always be received by someone in the same event again every year. Whether you see it as a more important thing in your life as to being a sports man and bagging achievements, I think no medal can buy the unity and friendship you have, after all as the saying goes “no man is an island”.

For this generation, only one can only look back and reminiscence the glory days where track was all together in one family, or let be capable role models not pulled into power just based on favoritism or lack of options or successor. I feel that it had been a failure on our part to retain the culture within the Club after we left which is track and field- the one which we all come to know and grown into a family. Personally, we are not doing justice or just being it’s simply unfair of depriving our juniors of that culture.

However, there is the possibility of the culture only existing within the people who created it- Is the bond and culture so strong that it is one which just leave the club the moment we pass out? We must understand that with change comes major change as well. which too involves the revamping and killing of all existing culture with it. Faced with resistance and change (especially with the new coaches) that was too a major contributing factor to the present segregation. Something beyond our reach and authority of intervention given our graduate statues, but that of course is not an excuse for negligence on our part either, we still have the interest of the club at heart.

Sometimes but as what my ex coach once said, it’s very difficult to please everybody, so sometimes what we see now could be an inevitable result of “survival of the fittest”.