Badminton or BAD-minton?

Whether you want to make it a fun experience or a bad experience, the choice is really up to each and every pupil.

After Mr Hui has announced to the P5 pupils that there will be a P5 Inter-class badminton competition, almost 4 out of 5 pupils are now brandishing their valuable badminton rackets, 'practising' at every single opportunity.

It sounds like fun and lots of actions. Pupils are very enthusiastic in this new sport. However, the following actions did give the whole event an ugly reputation.

• Using the rackets as 'weapons', hitting their friends and at school properties.



• Staying back in school to play badminton - withOUT informing their parents.


• Playing too much badminton until they forget about doing homework.


• Leaving these 'valuable' badminton rackets unattended.



• Stealing badminton rackets.

I feel that I need to clarify a few things:

• Form teachers will choose pupils to join the competition (if it is still on) - however the pupils have not been chosen yet.


• There is no badminton practice by any teacher's permission - thus if you want to stay back in school to play, please inform your parents that you are playing on your own initiative.


• Only for the next few PE lessons do you need to bring your badminton racket, that is, Mondays and Thursdays only. For badminton CCA players, Tuesdays will be included.

Keeping your badminton racket safe is YOUR RESPONSIBILITY. If you do not take good care of it (e.g. leaving it unattended in class during recess), anything can happen to it.

Some tips to safeguard your valuable racket:

• Always keep your racket with you at ALL TIMES, even to recess.


• Make sure that you have markings that are not easily removable. (Permanent markers are not good enough.)


• Keep the racket in the class cupboard. However it is not the Cupboard monitors' responsibilities to ensure that they are not stolen.

On having markings on your racket, you may consider doing the following (refer to the picture on the left):

(a) Design and colour the "stringed area" using a colour marker. This will give your racket a unique design.

(b) Wrap the handle with more than one rubber straps (each of different colours)

(c) Serialised your racket on the shaft - this means to go to the badminton racket shop and ask the shop keepers to help you inscribe / cut some unique string of numbers on your racket. It is like giving your racket a unique "NRIC" number so as to help you identify your racket easily.

There may be 101 ways to safeguard your racket, however if you do not take good care of it, it can still be lost.

There are more than 1000 pupils in Xinghua. Your racket is not UNIQUE - that is they are produced in millions! There is a very high chance that more than one pupil owns the same racket (possibly the same type of scratch marks).

Imagine if you lose your racket, how do you think we are can locate it? Should the whole school come to a stop and assemble at the hall for teachers to check on everybody and their bags? Isn't the school a big place for anybody to hide anything?

Think about it. Just what are the chances?

Isn't it better to, in the first place, make sure that your racket is safe with you? Is it worth to risk to go through the trouble and mental torture of losing your precious racket?

I know this has been a very long post by me but I hope that every word has been understood and acknowledged by you.

Don't make badminton a BAD-minton. The choice is yours.