S'pore's SEA Games water polo men's team more than brawn

Broad shoulders, rippling muscles and washboard six-pack abdominals are standard issue for most of Singapore's 23-time champion national water polo players.

What one might not expect, however, is the fact that this year's team of 13 heading to Palembang for the Southeast Asian (SEA) Games next month includes three National University of Singapore medicine students, a Nanyang Technological University (NTU) accountancy student and its youngest member, Brandon Chong, is a Raffles Junior College graduate.

Fresh out of his teenage years, Chong, who will be 20 in December, is among five new players to join the ranks of Singapore's national men's water polo team this year.

Currently into the final two months of his National Service, Chong played water polo through secondary school and JC, taking a break from the sport for his 'A' Level exams before he was called back by one of his former coaches to play for the national team.

"It's been a fun experience," he tells Yahoo! Singapore on training with the team. "Training is hard, but I suppose the teammates, the friends (here) make it worthwhile."

Chong acknowledges the pressure he and his four rookie teammates will face as they prepare to make their SEA Games debut in Palembang.

"Age is a reflection of experience, so being the youngest, I'll be the least experienced out of all of them," he says. "We just try to do our best at every training so hopefully when we go there, we will give our best and not be a liability," he adds with a laugh.

On a more serious note, Chong, who plays left driver, says he tries to focus more on his role in the team and what he needs to do.

"Personally, I don't know how the competition will be so for me, I'm not sure how difficult or easy it will be; I'm just going to try my best."

Juggling school, work and water polo

Senior player Kelvin Ong, 27, will be participating in his third SEA Games this year. Having represented the national team for more than five years, Ong sees his teammates more or less as family.

"I probably see some of them more often than I see my parents sometimes," he laughs. "We train almost every day so it's like a big family, and they're all brothers to me."

Currently studying accountancy in NTU, Ong strikes a balance between classes and nightly practices, weights training with the team on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and tries to attend morning swimming on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, which starts at six o' clock.

"It's definitely hard," Ong admits. "But playing sports, I think, helps in the sense that it teaches you to manage your time properly," he says. "Whatever free time you have outside the pool (you have to use wisely)... it instills the discipline in you to try to manage both (water polo and studies or work)."

Meeting the new captain

24-year-old Eugene Teo trained with Singapore's youth water polo team before starting out in the national team when he was 19. He was so passionate about the sport, however, that his efforts in it compromised his education while still in Ngee Ann Polytechnic.

"It's quite a stupid story, really," he said, sharing his experience of failing and dropping out of school after his first year to incensed reactions from his parents. "I was young and reckless back then... so now I have to work harder."

On leading the team for the first time this year, Teo says it's hard for him to feel like a captain.

"I've been playing with them all this while, and we've always been the same (rank) so it's just a bit more pressure, but everybody's helping me here and there," he says, adding that his new position requires him to maintain better control over his temper, which he said he tended to lose quite easily when playing.

"I have to be nice, pull them aside, talk to them and teach them nicely. I'm trying," he added, although acknowledging that he occasionally loses his temper.

When asked about integrating the team's five new players with its seasoned seniors, Teo said it wasn't as much of a challenge as he expected it to be.

"Back in '07, we were the newbies," he said, referring to himself and seven other players in the current team who played at the SEA Games for the first time that year. "We understand how they feel as well; we've been through that phase... (also) our age gap is smaller than it was when I first started!"

He also praised the performance of the team's rookies so far, citing their recent training stint with the Chinese national team in Guangzhou, where the two teams sparred over ten days of intense practice.

"The young ones really outperformed the older guys in general," he said, citing the possibility that they were doing their best to earn their stripes, as compared to the older players who had long secured their places in the team.

On the team's projected performance at the Games, Teo shows reasonable confidence at their ability to "do well", having played in continuous matches against the Malaysian and Philippine teams, although adding that there is uncertainty with hosts Indonesia, who were rumoured to have spent a month training in China, followed by a week in Hong Kong.

Looking further to the Asian Games?

Given the uninterrupted string of SEA Games gold medals the water polo team has enjoyed since Singapore's independence, it would be inevitable for a Singaporean supporter to ask, "What's next?"

In response, Teo feels it is difficult for the team to pitch themselves against players from countries such as China and Japan, which both have professional team players who commit themselves completely to the sport.

"We can match up to them (teams like China or Japan) for maybe the first or second quarter... but compared to them, we really have no fitness," he said. "In China, they train three times a day, seven days a week... Water polo is their livelihood, but it isn't ours. We're just playing out of passion, and team bonding -- having played together for so long," he added.

The team's most senior player Luo Nan, who is now 31 and married, agrees that it is difficult for the team to progress further unless they are able to go "semi-professional", meaning to receive a small monthly salary, for example, that will help them to spend more time focusing on water polo.

"What we get now from the Sports Council is just enough to recover our transport, maybe not even," he says, smiling ruefully. "With more support, maybe some players will be able to stop their part-time jobs and put in more time to train," he adds.

Luo will be stepping down from the national team after next month's Games to focus on training the women's water polo team, which will be competing for the first time at the Games.

"I do feel sad -- it's inevitable that every person who has to retire will feel sad," he said. "But I need to stop to focus on the women's team, and also to start a family."

Compared to the professional teams elsewhere, Luo said the Singapore team's training opportunities were simply inadequate for them to perform better than they do now. "Our training time is their (the China team's) rest time... we don't get a break," he said.

"Actually, I admire the Singapore water polo players because they have nothing to get by, but yet give a lot... (although) we also love the game. We love water polo," he said.

Catch all the action from the SEA Games from November 11 - 22 in Jakarta on Yahoo! Singapore.