SINGAPORE — An important yet often overlooked part of Singapore’s sporting ecosystem was given a boost yesterday as Sport Singapore (SportSG) officially launched CoachSG — an initiative aimed at improving the standards of coaches in the country.

Formulated as part of SportSG’s Vision 2030 Masterplan to encourage Singaporeans to lead a healthy lifestyle through sports, CoachSG’s aim is to help local coaches overcome some of the problems they encounter. These include a lack of recognition for their profession, poor financial security — coaches here earn on average about S$1,500 monthly — and a dearth of opportunities to upgrade themselves.

CoachSG will introduce Continuing Coach Education courses in business management, language skills, and leadership and people management. It will also review the formal education 
curriculum. It will also run workshops to help coaches improve their instructional skills, and work with sports organisations here, including national sports associations, to provide more sport-specific programmes for coaches to upgrade their skills and knowledge.

A Coach Developer Programme will also be launched this year to improve the quality of instructors and master coaches involved in training other coaches.

All these initiatives were conceptualised from feedback gathered by CoachSG staff during their engagement with almost 200 coaches over the past year, said CoachSG director Troy Engle at yesterday’s launch at the Joyden Hall at Bugis+. “We’re committed to co-creating every programme (with the coaches),” he said.

“We can’t guess what coaches need, so the cornerstone of CoachSG is going to be based on continual engagement with the coaches.”

Culture, Community and Youth Parliamentary Secretary Baey Yam Keng, who was guest of honour yesterday, said: “Coaches play an important role in shaping the sporting experiences of our young.

“We want our coaches to stay relevant in today’s constantly evolving sporting landscape. Through CoachSG, SportSG will also strive to raise the profile of coaching as a profession. One of the key outcomes is to work with our partners to ensure consistent employment policies and standards across the industry.”

Engle said the full impact of CoachSG would be felt only in the long term. “One marker of success for us is when a five-year-old kid who takes up a sport now is still doing that sport competitively or recreationally, at age 20.

“Right now, the statistics show that a lot of children quit sport at an early age, mostly because of lousy experiences with the coach. We also want to continuously meet the needs of the coaches. Our dream is for every coach in Singapore to be a competent one.”

CoachSG also unveiled NTUC’s Employment and Employability Institute (e2i) as one of their key partners, with their partnership enabling local coaches to enjoy 50 per cent off course fees for coaching programmes in the coming year.

Another partner of CoachSG is mobile application CoachEZ, which was co-founded by Singapore bowler Remy Ong. The app connects coaches with sport enthusiasts and learners.

Some of the benefits of the application include helping coaches manage their schedules, while also reaching out to more potential clients.

Local coaches TODAY spoke to welcomed the launch of CoachSG.

Khidhir Khamis, director and coach of 2Touch Soccer School, said: “This is a positive move for the industry that should have been done many years ago. They listened to us and are trying to improve our working conditions and solve our troubles.

“This will hopefully give coaches the push to upgrade themselves, and elevate the level of sport coaching and sports in Singapore.”

Agreeing, Singapore Slingers head coach Neo Beng Siang added: “Back when I was starting out as a coach, there were no opportunities to go for such developmental programmes. So it’s great that now we have this (CoachSG), and I’m sure it’ll help greatly in the overall development of coaches and sport in Singapore as a whole.”