BAM must put faith in home-grown coaches, says sports lecturer

The Badminton Association of Malaysia (BAM) should have faith in local coaches and stop depending on foreign expertise.
The local coaches, however, should not sit on their laurels but educate themselves to become better and more knowledgable in all aspects of the game.
This is the opinion of Tuan Sheikh Kamaruddin Sheikh Ahmad, a lecturer with the Physical Education Department of Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM), who has been vocal on the importance of educating the sports community.
He said BAM should even go as far as entrusting the job of national coaching director to a local.

Sheikh Kamaruddin: ‘Local coaches should take up courses and not be satisfied with their past experience as a player to get by.’

“We have engaged many foreigners in the past and they have contributed much to the sport. But the time has come for Malaysia to rely on the local coaches,” said Sheikh Kamaruddin.
BAM are looking at revamping their coaching and training structure and their new proposals will be revealed at a meeting on Sept 8. They are also looking at candidates for the chief coach position.
Malaysia have had many foreign coaches before, including Fang Kai Xiang, Han Jian and Li Mao of China; Morten Frost of Denmark and Park Joo-bong of South Korea.
BAM hired Yap Kim Hock as the chief coach in 2005 to show their faith in local coaches but terminated his services after the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
Malaysian badminton has been without a chief coach ever since.
Sheikh Kamaruddin said he was frustrated with the lack of enthusiasm shown by local coaches as far as equipping themselves with knowledge of the game.
“They should take up courses and not be satisfied with their past experience as a player to get by,” he said.
“Coaching a player is not only about improving their skills on the court. There are other aspects like sports science, psychology, physiology etc.”
“We have many sports science experts from the National Sports Institute (NSI) but their contribution is useless if the coaches don’t know what they want from a player.
“They should analyse and work together to maximise the potential of an athlete.”
Sheikh Kamaruddin is hoping that BAM’s coaching and training committee will avoid making the same mistakes again.
Courtesy of The Star