As part of the re-envisioning of SPEA, Committee members of SPEA had the privilege to visit the National Youth Sports Institute (NYSI) on the morning of 28 Nov 2023, Monday. The visit started with a sharing by Mr Jeter Yap, Performance Pathways Scientist (Analytics). He shared about how NYSI have reviewed their vision and purpose, the strategic direction that they are taking from 2023 to 2027 and how they have constantly evolved to support youth athletes for high performance.
One of the key highlights of the sharing is how they have taken a "transdisciplinary" approach to reducing complexities within their system so that they can sharpen their focus on building athletes for the long term. Joined by Mr Leslie Tan, Head Athlete Life, he shared their emphasis on developing youth athletes as role models and for future success. For instance, they shared how they will support youth athletes in changing a sport so that they can continue to be on the high-performance pathways. This is part of the talent-transfer initiative and to keep youth athletes in the high performance sports pathway for the long term.
We had an insightful discussion on how we can continue our work to impact the sports eco-system. Jexter and Leslie took us to various sites where they showed us how they have developed multiple capacities to support their youth athletes and how athletes are monitored and measured on their development.
A key focus was leveraging technology to allow NYSI to better monitor youth athletes holistically. The use of an app to enable athletes and the different sports science team for greater accessibility means that athletes can have access to their performance data anytime, anywhere and sports scientists can conduct their work based on data evidence. The monitoring system was also targeted to inculcate good habits. The functions in the app include a wellness questionnaire that monitors the athlete's sleep, soreness and stress levels.
To close this enlightening learning journey to NYSI, another round of discussion took place as we exchanged views on the challenges we faced, how we can overcome these challenges so that we can positively impact the sports eco-system.
We thank NYSI for their generous sharing, which gave us a deep insight into their growth as an organisation and how they have continued to evolve to meet the changing needs of the youth athletes.
The team headed off for lunch before proceeding to the envisioning exercise. After a healthy exchange of views and in-depth discussion about what matters to our PE and Sports fraternity, we began reviewing our current vision and mission statement and its relevance in meeting today's and future needs of our members and fraternity.
Similar to how NYSI has sharpened its approach, SPEA has adopted a similar approach to refresh and refocus the vision and mission so that SPEA can continue bringing more value to our members and build a community of PE professionals.
We ended the day with refreshing insights as we continue to embark on this journey of professional growth. It was a great way to end the day, feeling energised as we went back with greater clarity on how SPEA can move forward.
Reported by
SPEA Publicity and Publication Committee
Published on 29 Nov 2023.