SOCCER FOR BOYS

Why did two Zoom interviews with several people about a soccer tournament for kids in our church become so much more than gathering material for a news essay? How did our conversation change into a discussion about what young boys need? Yes, the interviews took us again to the excitement of the day. But looking back, they also made us realise that more than getting our Sunday school boys to lace their boots up, it was important for us to understand the complex world boys enter, a world that does not necessarily welcome parents and teachers. Here are the facts: U12 put together a mini soccer tournament on 8 November at The Cage Kallang, an indoor soccer stadium. This drew not only our Sunday school boys, but also dads, moms, other church adults, and children outside the church.

Stanley Soh: Toward the end of 2024, I was thinking up new programs for the new year. I wanted two programs that would help U12 children bond with their parents. So, this May, we got parents to build terrariums with their kids. I think the girls enjoyed this. This was the ‘artistic’ program. For the second program which I felt should be a ‘sports-based’ one, I wondered, “How about getting the dads and the kids to have a kickabout?” I confess I wanted something simple. I didn’t want our U12 parents to get too competitive about it.

Ian Wee: Well, football is competitive. In any match, one team wins, the other team loses.

William Yap: I think competitive sports can teach our boys many things.

Stanley: Not all our kids know how to play football. We need to remember this. So they’re going to break rules, and the poor referee will be blowing his whistle and this may upset parents. So in the beginning my plan was to have something very simple.

Stanley: I’m part of a WhatsApp chat-group of children pastors. We come from several denominations. In June, we were invited to field a team of our Sunday school kids. So I asked Ian and Terry Chia and a few others. Well, we got a team up, practised a bit and ended up runners-up!

Ian: We were so excited. This was when the thing grew. We talked to church parents. Sharon joined, and Hui Meng and Davyd Lin were recruited to coach the boys. For the kids to enjoy the games, they have to know what to do with the ball.

Stanley: Our mini soccer tournament was scheduled for 8 November. As the day drew closer, we saw we were going to have four teams to fight it out. But when we started, we weren’t sure we could form teams. We asked our U12 girls but nobody joined. Our U12 teachers are mostly women. Because football is such a male sport, they didn’t get involved. Looking back, having mixed teams would only have complicated things. So we asked YZ if they were keen to come in. And Pearce Low and Elias Kuah came.

Sharon Alfred: The U12 kids really looked up to them. When U12 kids join YZ, we hope they will recognise a few familiar faces.

Lek Hui Meng: Actually, I wasn’t recruited. I went up to Uncle Terry after I heard the announcement in church and said, “Uncle Terry, can I be of any help? Can I be part of this in any capacity?”

Hui Meng: He knows. Because growing up in church we have been playing football. I have been playing with the uncles in the church.

William Yap: We have soccer veterans who go back to the 1980s – Graham Ng, Chng Say Tiong, Liu Hann Fang. I think there were more. Jasper Lim and John Cheong were the second wave. Terry Chia, Wong Chee Seng, and I were in there somewhere. I think soccer will go on a long time.

Hui Meng: I have never officially coached football before. I know young boys have short attention spans. But I have been trained by a coach. I know the drills. So I took it from there.

Stanley: I love playing football. When I was a kid, I played for my school. But in True Way, I’m a football newcomer!

William: You could be a coach, a team manager, one of the organisers, whatever - but you’re a role model. These are young kids. We know they were going to look up to us.

Ian and Sharon: William joined later but he was very committed. Jude, Kyna and Eugene’s son is only eight years old. He was the youngest kid, but he was an absolutely fearless goalkeeper. Terry and Hui Meng took charge of forming the teams. They tried to match the teams for skills and height and stamina. And yes, in the end we had four teams.

Sharon: William, tell everyone why you’re wearing an arm-sling these days.

William: I got injured at one of our training sessions! This kid, I forget who, rammed a hard ball at me. I was goalie. The force fractured my wrist.

Sharon: But you didn’t take MC. You stayed in the games.

William: I’m a team manager, I can’t quit my boys! We had three other team managers – John, Jasper and Daniel Lim.

Ian: The interesting thing was we had quite a few ‘outsider’ boys. These boys heard about the tournament because they had joined some of our soccer clinics. We’ve been running these soccer clinics once every month for a while on Sunday afternoons. Pastor Stanley’s original plan was to have a parents-and-kids game. We thought, “Since we're already running the monthly clinics, maybe we could see if there was enough interest to have a tournament. I thought my own two kids would like to play. Many of us thought maybe it’d be good for U12 kids to have a group activity other than just going for Sunday school. From eight or ten boys, our clinics grew to around 20 boys.

Daniel: Like William, I was also a team manager. My job was to train with my team, to encourage them, take care of them. In my team, there was Pearce from YZ. The other four kids were Jonah, John’s son; Caius who’s Ian’s son; Jude, Eugene’s son, and a boy from outside called Harish. My boys had discussions about strategy. They had a lot of ideas on how they want to go about the attack and how they can work together in defense. They understood teamwork. They made friends with each other and with Harish. I was amazed.

Ian: I really appreciated that the people who got involved came to every one of the sessions. I guess parents want to see that we had serious coaches who will be there waiting for their kids at the next session. But at the end of the day, the true judges are the children, and not their parents. Will the boys say they had fun, that they learned something?

Hui Meng: I mostly coached the stronger players, the boys who have played football before. Davyd coached the larger group of boys who were unfamiliar with, or new to football. Davyd is a fun guy, the kids loved him!

Sharon: In a very good way, the football became something that allowed kids to meet kids and parents to meet parents.

Ian: I guess one way all children build friendships is when they meet at common activities like the monkey bar or basketball court or at netball. It’s not just sitting in class and listening to their teachers. I think the football clinics were a fantastic outreach avenue. I met an Indian family who lives in Tiong Bahru. There was also an Italian family who was interested in football. They came to our clinics.

Sharon: My boys didn’t only make friends with the other boys. They got to know some adults, too. Well, you know kids don’t usually hang out with adults. But my boys now speak to Davyd and Terry on Sundays because they got to know them. This intergenerational thing was one thing that grew.

Ian: Thank God we had a budget. I went to a shop and told the owner we don’t have a lot of money to spend. The owner said, “We have cheap medals but they are good quality. This guy said he would design, emboss and print, just a few dollars. We even had money to buy a prize trophy.

William: The medals were important. They will remind the boys of this time in their lives.

Sharon: To be honest, it’s not easy to keep kids in church. We need something for them, and it’s not going to be a sharp word from their parents, or exciting lessons about God or the Bible. For kids and teens, it’s finding peers who will become their friends. If we lose our kids during this phase, they’re not likely to stay in church very long. I don’t know about everyone here but there was a point in my life when I didn’t like going to church at all. I went because I didn’t want to be scolded. But today’s kids won’t behave the same way, that’s all.

William: I think I know what you mean, Sharon. I think girls find it easier to integrate into YZ compared to boys. They’re more social. Boys can be loners, so having a big brother in YZ helps.

Stanley: That’s a good question, we’ll see! It will depend on how many volunteers and helpers we get. I know there’s a lot of interest right now.

Stanley: Boys today play computer games, many have never played football or sports. There’s social media. For their part, parents and dads are busy themselves. So the easy thing is let the kids do their own thing just so they can get a precious breather themselves. But the right and true answer to what boys need is Jesus. All of us need Jesus.

John: Boys need friends. Boys being boys, they’re going to want to compete. Even if it were for one game. They’re happy if they win, sad if they lose. This pretty much sums up the emotions. I can speak for my son Jonah who was a member in Daniel’s team. Jonah is P6. He was initially reluctant because his main sport is basketball, not football. So Jonah’s not very good at football. But I saw that once he joined his team, he was competing. He ran for the ball, he didn’t stand on the side. Every boy that day was competing. They worked as a team. Everybody saw that. And everybody was screaming and cheering. I saw that Jonah became a better player. So yeah, I thought the tournament was very good. The kids really, really had a great time, and they grew.

Lee Chung Horn is a church elder and TOGETHER’s chief editor. He works as a medical doctor. Yang Hai Kun came to True Way in 2021. He is a lawyer. The following persons spoke to TOGETHER for this interview: Stanley Soh, Ian Wee, Sharon Alfred, William Yap, Daniel Lim, Lek Hui Meng, John Cheong. All photos and video by Lee Chung Horn.

Editor-in-chief Lee Chung Horn • Subeditors/writers Joyce Peh, Michelle Cheong, Soh Lay Bin, Kevin Chua, Jakin Heng, Gracia Lee, Michelle Ng, Yang Hai Kun • Photographers Jimmy Ang, Ang Li Yan, William Neo, Ronnie Koh, Erick Kencana, Jethro Fernandez • Web design Tony Cheung
TOGETHER is published online twice a year. Opinions expressed are those of the authors. All rights reserved. Current and previous issues of TOGETHER are available at trueway.org.sg/newsletters.