Kota Kinabalu: The success story of the State archery contingent at the 19th Sukma Games in Ipoh, Perak can be put down to excellent team work with well planned programme and commitment from all individuals involved.This followed the Sportsman Award won by compound archer Eugenius Lo Fooh Soon who took home four individual gold medals and broke one national and four Games records, as well as helping to win two silvers in the team events.Sabah Archery Association president Datuk Zainie Abd Aucasa who shared his views on how the team managed to maintain their high achieving rate in the Games despite strong competition from other states praised Eugenius for his outstanding achievement.
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"What was achieved by Eugenius was exceptional and beyond our expectations. He won in style by setting one national record and broke meet records in the others. He is definitely our hero and heroes like him come once in a while to any team."The team and his success as a whole were all down to well planned programme. We had prepared hard for this Sukma, started almost immediately after the last Games in Kuching. Training were initially held at district levels with occasional competitions conducted to gauge the progress of the archers and coaches.
"At the same time, the selected archers were sent for exposure to participate in both locally and internationally organised tournaments."Towards the last three months prior to Sukma, we intensified the training levels by conducting more centralised training in Kota Kinabalu to monitor very closely the performances of each individual archers working on their weaknesses and improving their strengths.
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"I am very pleased with the high devotion, commitment and passion shown by each and every one of the archers and the coaching team as well the support by parents and officials."One has to be engaging, persuasive and lead by example. These are the essential ingredients of a successful team. Everyone tried their very best and these archers had to endure heavy disciplined routines under the unpredictable weather as well as sacrificing their studies and leisure time, and not mentioning the financial resources they had spent," he added.
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He said the improving standard of the sport in recent years was the main factor the team was unable to achieve their six-gold target set by MSN."The standard of archery in Malaysia has improved tremendously in recent years. While we have been successful in the last two Sukmas, maintaining and improving at that level has not been easy. Many states have also improved significantly as can be seen in the almost fairly distribution of the gold medals amongst the states which in the past used to be the monopolised by certain states."We have set ourselves a high standard and expectations, so it is very disheartening to have missed the target set by MSN, however, we still managed four golds and two silvers, which by any standard now, is very high and the envy of many teams.
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"Despite the success, we cannot afford to rest on our laurels. We have in fact set our eyes on the next Sukma in Johor in two years time with a discussion already started while still in Ipoh."With the increasingly high standard of this sport, we need to think and strategise beyond the box. We need to intensify our grassroots development and have much bigger pool of talents to choose from....and all this is to start tomorrow."
