SHUNGO NAJIMA

15, JAPANESE

School: Singapore American School (SAS) Years at the school: 4 Sporting passion: Baseball

Baseball is quintessentially a team sport. To win, everyone has to play well; being able to celebrate the victory with all my teammates makes it fun. I started playing at the age of five years. I represent SAS in varsity baseball at the Interscholastic Association of Southeast Asian Schools and the SAS Community Sports and Activities. So far, I’ve been awarded best pitcher at the All-tournament IASAS competition and the South East Asia Youth Baseball and Softball Tournament. I won the Cy Young Award in the Baseball Classic Tournament last year, plus a few other awards over the years. A word with... KIM CRIENS High School Activities and Athletics Director, SAS How kids benefit from sport “Beyond the clichés such as fitness, teamwork, preparation, perseverance and character education are other benefits including school spirit, student agency and leadership. At SAS, we like to especially focus on grit. We believe that nothing worthwhile in life comes easy. Our student-athletes’ experiences with adversity on the sports field will transfer to other facets in their lives. The more opportunities they have to demonstrate accountability and commitment, the better for our school.”

Things for parents to look out for “Be very thoughtful about specialisation. There is very little evidence that early specialisation achieves better long-term results. In fact, the opposite is true. ”

“There is tremendous transfer among different activities in terms of preparation, role-understanding and competition. Further, there is tremendous social value to playing different sports with different teammates, under the guidance of coaches with different coaching styles. If the focus of an athletic programme is exposure to adversity, students should be exposed to this in as many arenas as possible.”

“On the flipside, year-round specialisation contributes to emotional burnout and can result in overuse injuries due to repetitive movement patterns. We are huge advocates of well-rounded students.” Find out more about the school’s sports offerings at sas.edu.sg.