STATE Youth and Sports Committee chairman Soon Lip Chee has encouraged the recipients of ‘Penang Athletes Career Education’ (PACE) programme to embrace some of the key principles of life to keep shining in their respective sports.
Soon highlighted that having dreams and desires, self-resilience, confidence, and maintaining good fitness level (health) would help propel them towards victory.
“Firstly, you must have the desire to achieve. This desire will lead to where you want to go. Secondly, you must have the resilience to keep pressing on and have a never-say-die attitude.
“Thirdly is your confidence. You must believe that you can do it, and fourthly is your physical strength, or in other words, fitness; you must take care of your health.
“When you put all these together, it would serve you as a launching pad towards success,’’ said Soon during the second day of the interaction session with the PACE athletes via zoom this morning.
Earlier on June 12, Soon, who also participated in the day one of the virtual interaction, reaffirmed that the state government through PACE, would ensure the well-being of athletes in the state.
Meanwhile, Penang State Sport Council director Harry Chai thanked all the corporate sponsors of the PACE programme for their continuous support.
“Our sponsors have played a pivotal role in helping us to expedite the implementation of the PACE programme after it was launched in August last year.
“Thank you for being a pillar of strength to us, and your contribution has been instrumental in driving our athletes to perform well in sports as well as in their academic.
“The future looks bright for them. With this, Penang will definitely rise to create more milestones in the sports arena.
“And to the athletes, we entrust the future of sports to you to bring us the honour and glory,’’ Chai said.
National archer Khambeswaran Mohanaraja, who also took part in the interaction session, expressed his hopes of participating in the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles, USA.
“In archery, we have two categories, that is recurve and compound. So far, Olympics only features the recurve category.
“I was informed that in 2028 Olympics, compound archery may be introduced for the first time. But if they do not include it, then I will focus on the Asian Archery Championships,” said Khambeswaran, who is currently pursuing his tertiary studies at Universiti Sains Malaysia.
His highest achievement is the 2019 SEA Games where he won gold medal for the national compound archery squad in Philippines.
Apart from Khambeswaran, national floorball players Chong Han and Benedict Yeoh Chun Keat as well as hockey player, Iziniza Ismail, who represented Penang in 2014 Sukma Perlis, 2016 Sukma Sarawak 2016 and 2018 Sukma Perak, also joined the interactive session.
Story by Tanushalini Moroter
Pix by Noor Siti Nabilah Noorazis