The National Service Factor in Sports Development

National Service (NS) is one of the key foundations, along with multiculturalism and religious harmony, in Singapore's unique social fabric. All men of the modern generation have gone through the NS rites, including our best athletes. These athletes leave their schools as our nation's future sporting champions, but very few of them actually reach their potential to make Singapore proud in international competitions. What happened to these potential sports stars? Did NS hinder your passion and motivation to excel in your sports? Why do so few continue their sports after school and NS? In our national quest for more sporting excellence and ESPORTS it is time to review our NS policy and see how we can truly support and encourage the travels of these potential sporting stars without necessarily compromising the security of the nation.

The argument that NS is detrimental to the development and ongoing journey of our budding athletes from school is not new. The affected athletes have been fighting for years for the Ministry of Defense (MINDEF) to make concessions and special arrangements so that they continue with their training programs with their sports coaches. In most cases, MINDEF has adopted a general guideline that athletes can still continue their sports careers as long as their obligations to their respective NS units are not compromised. This basically means that athletes will have to count on the willingness of their commanders to make special arrangements for them to continue training, and at the same time fulfill their training and duties with their units. A very difficult task at best. Any top-tier athlete will tell you that in order to be successful and competitive with the rest of the other world-class athletes, it is common practice to train twice a day, seven days a week, with full nutritional and physiological support. NS training alone is difficult enough, and asking our athletes to spend time at NS and train at the same time is simply not possible. Faced with this situation, most of our athletes have no choice but to quit. Only a handful, with good luck and determination, will be able to find the time to balance NS training and commitments so that some degree of success is possible. Even these athletes don't compare well when competing with other athletes around the world. How do athletes in countries without compulsory HL do just? Let's do some more research.

At the Olympics, the usual powers that win the most medals include countries like China, the United States, Russia, Australia, Great Britain, Germany, and, to some extent, South Korea and Japan. Do these countries have compulsory military service? The answer is no. A logical conclusion here is that your athletes have unobstructed paths to their sporting ambitions and peak performance in sports. Of course, some might argue that these countries are large in terms of population size. China has a population of 1.3 billion. Surely, from this mass of people, you can find champions of various sports. That's true. Let us now examine countries with a population similar to Singapore and compare their sporting achievements.