Nip it in the bud

BAM to revamp junior shuttlers’ programme

PETALING JAYA: The Badminton Association of Malaysia (BAM) are all set to tackle the deteriorating standard among junior shuttlers.

The first step under BAM’s revamp of their national junior programme involves the phasing out of shuttlers from the Bukit Jalil Sports School (BJSS).

Students aged between 13 and 17 will be relocated to the state-of-theart Badminton Academy Malaysia (ABM) in Bukit Kiara, where they will be trained by world-class coaches.

The Form Four and Form Five students will move into the ABM hostel in January, followed by those from Form One to Form Three.

Once they are all based at the ABM, they will enjoy the full fitness programme at BAM’s mini-Sports Science Centre.

They will also be given clear directions and targets to achieve.

BAM are in crisis right now due to a lack of depth among their juniors, who have been struggling to make the transition to the senior level.

BAM president Datuk Seri Norza Zakaria (pic) acknowledged the severity of the problem when he said that “the re-structuring of the junior programme would be given more importance than the elite programme”.

“We want to nip the problem at the bud for good this time. We have inherited unfit players from our junior programme. Some juniors move up and get injured,” said Norza.

“I’m not pleased. There have to be changes if we want to see quality juniors coming through.

“We’ll get good coaches and they will select the juniors for our academy right from the start. (Now, the selection of Form One students into the BJSS are done by school teachers).

“All our juniors will be based at ABM and none will be left in BJSS.”

Norza said that newly-appointed acting head of ABM Dr Suresh Kumar would work closely with the Education Ministry to facilitate the transfer of the players and ensure all juniors at ABM would continue to get quality education as well.

Norza said that he has also development committee chairman David Wee to collate data on the current ranking of the juniors.

“Our national team are ranked top five in the world, but where are our juniors? We’ll gather all this data and do the changes. By January, we want our new junior programme to be up and running,” said Norza.

The Asian Junior Championships in Jakarta from July 22-30 will give an early indication as to where the juniors stand compared to their peers from China, South Korea, Indonesia, Japan, India, Taiwan and Thailand.