After a two year hiatus, we finally had our school sports day, or Sukan Sekolah 2022 since it’s for the year 2022.
Since it was the first time we are holding Sukan Sekolah since the pandemic, the school administrators decided to make this years slightly grander by making it a four day event.
Two days were reserved for track events, one day was for field events and the final day was for the closing ceremony and the march pass competition.
The management also decided to increase the number of sports houses or Rumah Sukan this year to six, from four.
Moving on from UNGU
If you read any of my previous post related to Sukan Sekolah, you would know that I was the head for UNGU for two years in a row.
We came in as champs in 2019, and fell to third in 2020.
For Sukan Sekolah 2022, the increase of Rumah Sukan meant that teachers and students needed to be reshuffled and I was matched in Rumah Biru or BIRU as I like to call it.
The leader of the new Rumah Sukan wasn’t me (rightfully it shouldn’t, because house leaders (or Ketua Rumah) of Rumah Sukan are selected by turn), and it was given to our new colleagues, Collin and Anis.
Despite changing Rumah Sukan, I do feel proud that quite a number of teachers and students who previously were in UNGU with me, did relay they were sad they weren’t in UNGU again. Â To me, this is a personal achievement as I felt I had a hand in making them feel attached to UNGU and managed to get everyone own UNGU as their Rumah Sukan.
Biru’s Slogan: Agi Biru!
Either way, Sukan Sekolah 2022 is all about BIRU, so UNGU is now just a memory of the past.
A new Rumah Sukan meant a new slogan. Â While I was no longer the leader, I did have a hand in creating the slogan which ‘just happened’.
It happened because I was early to the first meeting and the students and I had nothing to do.
Therefore, I decided to lift up their spirits for being part of BIRU by creating a slogan or one would say ‘battle cry’.
At first, I decided to use something similar to what I did with UNGU, but later felt if was too similar.
Therefore, I decided to use the Iban word ‘Agi’ which means ‘As long as’ and combine it with BIRU, to create the slogan ‘AGI BIRU’.
This translates to ‘As long as we are BIRU’, which I think is interesting as it combines a local language in our identity.
Interestingly, after Hari Sukan, I realized that ‘Agi Biru’ has similar to ‘UNGU Forever’ which we coined in 2019.
What I did
Other than that, I did share what I learned as Ketua Rumah of UNGU to BIRU’s new leaders, Colin and Anis.
But at times, I do feel like an ‘old man’ giving unrequested/unwanted advice to them. Therefore, when I have said what I needed to say, I stopped and just supported where I can as they gave out the orders.
The problem is sometimes I think I overstep my boundaries as I don’t like wasting time, and end up taking charge. My bad.
Regardless, I tried my best to show support and encourage the students to participate in events during for Sukan Sekolah because I belief that students need such motivation, and if we had any chance to compete this year, we need to go for participation numbers.
Other than that, I largely stayed behind the scenes, and let Collin and Anis call the shots, and focused much of my work towards the Photography committee which was also another task I had to do for Sukan Sekolah 2022.
Photography committee
Since I was no longer the head of Rumah Sukan, I was also given another task for Sukan Sekolah 2022, which was to lead the photography committee.
In this committee, I was asked to lead 11 students to capture and document the whole event. It was actually only six, but there was some confusion, so I ended up with 11.
Regardless, I came out with this idea to have everyone crowdsource photos for Sukan Sekolah 2022 by contributing their photos to a specially made, but ‘internally circulated’Â Telegram group.
Aside from that, my committee also took photos and shared it in the group.
To protect students privacy and ensure outsiders (non school related people) don’t get access to the photos easily, and the link to the group was shared internally through the class teachers.
This meant students can download photos taken, and they can also share photos they have taken. Â This in turn creates a massive pool of photos we can use for the school magazine or other ‘things’ in the near future.
The result
When it comes to BIRU, we finished second. We almost became champions, but there was lack of participation especially in field events, hence our defeat to Rumah Hijau which came in first. The distance between BIRU and HIJAU was over 70 points, which is equal to almost 6 gold medals.
As you can see below participation played a huge role in helping HIJAU win the title.
In the Acara Guru (Teacher’s Event) which was the 8 x 50m relay, we didn’t win any medals as two of our runners tripped during the run. I personally thought we did well in the teacher’s event because we did fight until the very end despite being short of one male teacher.
As for the Photography Committee, we amassed over 5,450 photos and videos in the Telegram group and many students I noticed, at last, were able to share photos of their participation in Sukan Sekolah.
That said, I think this was a good year for Sukan Sekolah 2022 and I look forward to another one next year.
Also, check out a short video below which highlights the sports day this year.
Ayuh BIRU, agi BIRU, kita BIRU!
