Walking down the memory lane, I
remember being an active kid back in the days when I was in primary school.
Every evening I will be seen playing outside with my neighbours and siblings
like all carefree children would. Ranging from bicycle racing, exploring empty
houses that were deemed spooky, climbing trees, playing rounders (something
like baseball) and even the simpler version of game like bola beracun. I remember hiding behind someone just to evade the
ball and to play longer, those were the good ol’ days J
Today the memories of my
childhood game resurfaced again with a different name, dodgeball and it has
been recognized around the globe with tournaments and teams of amateur and
professional leagues. There was even a movie Dodgeball in 2004 and in Malaysia itself, dodgeball game has made
it to the list of 10 alternative sports played in Malaysia. You can check out the trailer below if you have no idea what and how dodgeball works :
Today with our very own
National Dodgeball Team for men, women and mixed category, Malaysia has
actually performed well in the latest Dodgeball World Championship held in
Australia last October when the female team emerged as the victorious champion
and the male team snagged the first runner up placement.
Due to the increasing popularity
of dodgeball game especially among college-goers, INTI College will be
organizing their 3rd INTI Dodgeball Open Co-Ed 2016 on the 26th
and 27th November with the support from Malaysia Association of
Dodgeball and sponsored by SportsPlay. The club president, Eng Yong Xiang has been interviewed to get more insight about the tournament and the sports itself :
1. Hi, there. Tell me about yourself
Hello! I am Eng Yong Xiang, 20 years old this year. I have been studying in INTI College Subang for 3 years now. I had done my diploma here and I am now doing my bachelor of business major in hotels management. I’m also holding the position of President in INTI College’s Reapers Dodgeball Club. Although my degree’s life is hectic, but I still find time to train Dodgeball twice a week and also to guide my junior and the school team.
2. How did you first get involved in dodgeball?
The first time I heard about dodgeball was during my first day of orientation in INTI. The Emcee mentioned that the college’s best sport is dodgeball, and it was a sport that I’ve never heard off. I am curious, so I joined the first training session. It was fun and I am happy to get to know new friends during the training session. Since that day, I never miss a single training and I felt in love with this sport. I got motivated by my captain and seniors so I decided to focus and train harder.
3. I personally know about dodgeball when I watched a movie by the same name produced back in 2004 and I found it interesting. Do you in any way felt related to that movie?
I think the movie is very funny and it is a good way to introduce dodgeball. The sports managed to grow and became popular in European countries but not in Asian countries. Not many Asian knows about the movie and they have never heard about dodgeball.
4. For the upcoming event, what's the highlight for you?
This will be the third year of INTI Open and our committee would like to make it as an annual event. As the organizing chairperson, I will make sure that the event will run smoothly and hoped that it will be greater year by year. I will do my best to make all the participants feel comfortable and enjoy playing in this tournament. I hope that this event will be successful!
5. From your experience and observation, how has the dodgeball scene in Malaysia has grown?
From my point of view, dodgeball in Malaysia is getting popular especially in Klang Valley. This sport starting to get noticed as our Team Malaysia had won the Champion for Female category and Silver Medalist for Male category in the Australia Dodgeball World Championship last month. However, there are still many people who are not familiar with this sport, which stopped them from trying it.
The sport is still an unknown in some of the states like Terengganu, Kelantan and Melaka. Thank you to MAD for guiding us in organizing this INTI Open 2016 tournament and giving the opportunity to all ‘dodgeballers’ to gather and compete with each other.
6. Do you think this sport is growing in INTI?
Definitely yes! The students especially the freshies are interested with new sport and they will give a try. Furthermore, we are the best sports club in INTI College Subang and our training session is very active and consistent. We can always find new young and potential players from INTI Dodgeball club.
7. What is your vision for this sport, and how would you like to see INTI’s contribution in it?
I hope Dodgeball will be recognized as a major sport, especially since our Team Malaysia is really strong. Then, this sport should be introduced nationwide in order to search for more potential players.
I hoped that INTI College can continue to show their support on our club and provide more subsidy for us to organize events and joining more open tournaments. I also wished that they could help us to improve our training ground.
8. Any final thoughts to the participants, sponsors, association and public about this competition and dodge in general?
First of all, I would like to represent Reapers Dodgeball Club to say Thank You to INTI College Subang and MAD for showing support on allowing us to organize this event. They also guided us on doing the proposal and the setup. Next, I would like to say a million Thank You to SportsPlay, especially to KG who is willing to support and helping us. We hoped that this partnership will continue in order to expand the dodgeball sport. Our event will not be the same without their endless support! Thank you Yong Xiang, and we wish you all the best for the upcoming tournament.
This tournament will be held from 9.00am – 6.00pm at INTI College Subang Futsal Court, level 4 Block C. 24 teams competing for cash prizes and medals, sponsored by SportsPlay. For more information and updates about this tournament, logon to their Facebook page.
The sponsor for INTI Dodgeball Open Co-Ed 2016 is SportsPlay, Asia’s 1st Sports Matching App. It is a mobile app which allows you to search, arrange, meet up and play sports together. This is the info from their website on what this app is about
SportsPlay, is the ultimate tool for you to discover new friends thru sports game that you love. SportsPlay is the first in Asia sport-matching app that connects you to sports partners at your level and in your area.We match, you play! From sport buddies, to running buddies, to basketball buddies,to football buddies. We’ve got you covered.
The co-founder and CMO of SportsPlay, KG Chung was interviewed to give his insight about dodgeball scene and the tournament :
1. Tell me about your role in SportsPlay
I am KG Chung, the Chief Marketing Officer / Co- Founder at SportsPlay. We are a startup company with a team of 8, including another Co-founder (Mr Jin Tan) and our advisor (Mr Alvin Lai). My key role is to drive collaboration between SportsPlay and sports facilities throughout Malaysia. Besides that, we are also looking into collaborating with sports academy and sports event organizers. Most importantly, SportsPlay is here because we would want to create and promote awareness to healthier lifestyle for SportsPlay users, other than enabling them to join and enjoy their sports/game of choice
2. I’ve read on your facebook page on the partnership cum sponsorship for the upcoming INTI Dodgeball 2016 tournament. Why dodgeball?
Dodgeball is quite a new sport but its popularity is gaining especially among the youth & college students. However, it is still not much known to the public and receives very little media attention. Recently, Malaysia Dodgeball team had just won GOLD (Women) & Silver (MEN) in the world championship that was held in Australia. Malaysia has 2 world class teams (1st for women and 2nd for men) in this sports, but how many people are aware of this? Very very less.
Therefore, SportsPlay would love to use our platform to attract more attention to our national heroes for their remarkable achievements. We would like to see more people to get involve, to be curious about this sport. We want to continue building a pool of talents for the national team. We want to play an important part in developing a healthier Malaysian communities by using our smart Sports Technology Platform.
3. How does SportsPlay app play a role in sports event organization in this competition?
We in SportsPlay wants to promote and build a platform that gives access to people get much more involved in sports. For this competition, part of our goal is to help to promote dodgeball to the public. We want to support and assist the national dodgeball team to maintain their success and achievement for the long term. We hope that by utilising SportsPlay as a platform to connect, it can also help varsity and colleges’ dodgeball team. For instance, we have helped the teams Reapers Dodgeball Club and Joker Dodgeball Club to build their team and connect them with those who have same interest and passion together. SportsPlay aimed to be the bridge between dodgeball and people in the public who wants to know more about the sport.
4. The prize money is quite generous for a competition at this level (fare much better than many other tournaments, even from popular sports). Do you think this will create more competitive edge among the participants?
The prize money is not mainly for creating more competitive edge, but for us, it is more towards showing our sincerity in supporting dodgeball and to bring this sport into larger scale. We would want to reward the team that fought all out with their passion. So that they will be able to have the sense of achievement after all the efforts that they have spent and put together for this sport. The prize money for this tournament is RM1,500 for the champion. RM800 and RM500 for 1st and 2nd runner up.
5. I have installed and explored the SportsPlay app myself, I thought that it’s an interesting, practical app with a well-thought flow. How does this app help the event organizer in terms of the registration process?
SportsPlay aims to build a sports hub & provide a solution for the Sports industry, via a smart digital platform. In a way, SportsPlay wants to become a problem solver for many offline challenges that are faced by the sports industry.
With SportsPlay app, we can help sports event organizers to :
- process their player registration easily
- capture participant data and user behaviour for future use.
- promote the event to a well-gathered sports communities & social sports players.
- continue to build traction for your participants even after the event is over.
- with all the above, corporate sponsorship will be more willing to come in & support the event.
6. Can this app help event organizer attract sponsors? If yes, how?
Yes, definitely this app is the answer to attracting sponsors. Sponsors will always ask the event organizers for participants’ database, user statistics, numbers, report, ROI, target market and conversion % in order to approve the sponsorship request.
Well, SportsPlay is built to solve this particular issue for the event organizer. Using this available information from the platform, it would be more efficient and effective way to attract sponsors. Just like what we have done for this event.
Not only that, one of the recent partnership is with iSportsasia, where we see that there is a synergy working together by integrating the online and offline sports platform.
7. How do you look at Sports Play involvement in sports event from grassroots level? Is that also the focus?
Yes, SportsPlay’s biggest aim is to build a smart sports communities using technology to push Malaysia for “Sports Nation” status. It has always been one of SportsPlay intention to improve participation of sports from the grassroots level.
SportsPlay app can increase players’ playing rate and the number of people that is involved with sports. SportsPlay can be used to find new players to play with, make it easier to play at anytime, anywhere. Just set the venue and arrange the time where the players want to start play sports. Then can use it to gather social sports users at the selected venue.
With all these features enabled, there will never be a lack of active people to join in. Organizers can also easily promote their events to the right target market (active sports people), bring in more sponsors for the sports event and can later decrease the commitment fee for participants, so that more people be willing to join. At the end, we are building (via SportsPlay) a better place and easier way for athletes & media to connect with the program and event
8. How do you see SportsPlay and dodgeball association/clubs partnership and collaboration in the future?
We would like to build a special relationship with Malaysia Dodgeball Association via a long-term partnership. This partnership is for both parties work together to continue to raise the popularity of dodgeball game & promote it further in Malaysia. SportsPlay and Malaysia Dodgeball Association have the same mission, vision and passion that is to further building stronger sports communities in Malaysia, regardless of any challenges that we may face.
9. SportsPlay has organized many other events, when and where would be the next one after this Dodgeball comp?
In December, SportsPlay will host another Netball competition at Sungai Petani, Kedah. Other sports that we are in midst of planning and arrangement are futsal, basketball, badminton and a very new and interesting sports that everyone should try; “Trampoline”
10. Final thoughts/special mention for the upcoming dodgeball tournament and SportsPlay events?
SportsPlay is still a new digital sports platform, but it offers creativeness & uniqueness for those in the sports industry.
Therefore, we recommend all sports lovers to support by downloading SportsPlay and use it extensively. Let this platform be the start of your new and interesting digital solution and experience in sports.
Behind SportsPlay, the team is driven by passionate, experienced and sports lovers ourselves. Our aim is to make this platform a success. We would also want to expand this solution to another part of the world as well. Hence, we will need more support from more parties to come on board with us.
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