Story by Lim Yong Teck/Red Sports. Photos by Lim Yong Teck and Soh Jun Wei/Red Sports
Ierhan Raushan (left) of FootyLad FC controls the ball during the Football 7s U-17 competition of the Singapore Youth Olympic Festival. (Photo 1 © Lim Yong Teck/Red Sports)
Jurong East Sports Centre, Saturday, July 25, 2015 — The Football 7s competition of the Singapore Youth Olympic Festival was a hit among youth, seeing participation from 11 teams in the Under-14 category and 18 teams in the Under-17 category.
Among those teams was Woodgrove Community Sports Club (CSC), formed by school team players from various schools in Woodlands.
“All of us are good friends and we stay around the same area, so we have been playing together for more than four years already,” said 13-year-old Francis Ivan Carin.
“Our coach told us about the festival and he helped us with the registration. It’s really quite fun and challenging because there are so many teams to play with,” added the Woodlands Secondary student.
50-year-old James Lim, who helms the Woodgrove CSC team, was all praises for the festival.
“I think it’s a great event where the kids can play, especially under the Olympic banner,” said Lim.
“These boys are mostly from Normal (Academic) and Normal (Technical) streams in their schools, so what the CSC does for them is a study-and-play programme, where we arrange for them to play and participate in tournaments, and in return, the boys have to promise to do well in their studies.
“It will also be very useful for the boys, to play and at the same time learn the Olympic values.”
While most of the teams boast players with football backgrounds, FootyLad FC, on the contrary, is made up of mostly players with backgrounds in athletics.
16-year-old Ierhan Raushan is known in the athletics fraternity with his middle-distance accolades, and one would not expect to see him at a football competition.
Along with fellow athletes Gideon Phong, Marcell Tan, Hu Hua Xin, the Singapore Sports School student teamed up with three other friends to take part in a weekend of football fun.
“It was actually a last-minute decision to join, because two of our friends backed out,” said Ierhan.
“So I asked my footballer friends to come and join us. The team was originally made up of purely trackers.”
First organised by the Singapore Olympic Foundation in 2011, the Singapore Youth Olympic Festival is a fun sporting event for youth athletes aged 18 and below, and serves as a legacy of the inaugural Youth Olympic Games, which was held in Singapore in 2010.
The festival, in its fourth edition, will be held over two weekends from July 25 through August 2 and will comprise nine sports.
Sports and venues involved in SYOF
3×3 Basketball – Anglican High School
Badminton – Jurong East Sports Centre
Football 7s – Jurong East Sports Centre
Rugby 7s – Yio Chu Kang Sports Centre
Sailing – National Sailing Centre
Shooting – SAFRA Yishun
Table Tennis – Yio Chu Kang Sports Centre
Taekwondo – Woodlands Sports Centre
Volleyball – Jurong West Sports Centre
For more information on the festival, visit http://www.syof.sg.
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