Change of direction paid dividends

Singapore water polo player Paul Tan's talent in the sport stood out from a young age, much like his 1.85m frame in a crowd these days.

He had lungs of steel, clocked sub-10 minute times for his 2.4km run in school, and could swim up and down the pool all day long.

He had height - Tan was 1.76m when he was 13 - and great hand-eye coordination, a trait he attributes to mother Rosalind, a former national basketballer and netballer.

In fact, the left-hander was so dominant, when he was representing Anglo-Chinese School (Barker) in the schools national water polo championships, he used to score half or more of the team's goals.

Yet while he has been a fixture in the national team since 2003, Tan's career could have had a different trajectory - if not for Yu Lei, his former coach at ACS (Barker).

Because, as the trainee teacher now readily admits, Paul Tan the national water polo player could easily have been Paul Tan the retired national swimmer.

Said Tan, 30: "I was representing my school in swimming and water polo. I started swimming when I was seven, I thought I was good at it, so I stuck with it."

An accomplished distance freestyle swimmer, Tan made the national age group squad when he was 13.

But coach Yu, a no-nonsense man, had different ideas for his star player.

One day in 1999, Yu, who had just taken over as the school's water polo coach, sat his protege, then 15, down, and said something that would define Tan's career.

Said Yu, 43: "I told Paul it was time to give up swimming, and focus more on water polo.

"Water polo players have a longer shelf life, plus I knew he definitely had the potential to represent Singapore. He was team-oriented, had good awareness, and was very agile in the water.

"With swimming, I was not so sure if he could be as successful."

This was not the selfish opinion of a success-hungry school coach eager to hold on to his star player. Yu had been through exactly the same transition.

Although he was a swimmer with the Sichuan state team, Yu switched to water polo when he was 13 - also on the advice of his coach, who felt that Yu was hitting a plateau.

It paved the way for a 10-year career with the China national team, and two Asian Games outings. Yu finally stopped playing water polo at 36.

The conversation enlightened Tan. He went for fewer swim training sessions, and focused more on water polo.

Said Tan: "After the chat I realised I did have the potential to do well in water polo. It helped that he went through the same thing, and I was convinced."

Coach Yu also had to persuade Tan's mother, who had spent hours poolside watching her son swim, that water polo was right for her child.

In hindsight, the switch proved to be a masterstroke.

Tan's game picked up rapidly under the tutelage of Yu. In less than a year, his passing became sharper and faster. His movement was more efficient.

Four years after that chat, Tan made his national team debut. Since then, he has won three SEA Games gold medals, and was also part of the team that finished sixth at the last Asiad in Guangzhou.

Said Tan: "Coach Yu helped shaped my career. I don't think I would've lasted beyond 20 if I had continued with swimming. I was good, but I wasn't fantastic.

"Giving up swimming is a decision I don't regret at all."

Next Sunday, Tan heads to South Korea for his second, and, in all likelihood, last Asian Games.

At the Dream Park Aquatics Centre, he hopes to help the team better their Guangzhou 2010 feat. But whether he succeeds or not, Tan's achievement is already testament to the impact his former coach had on him.

siangyee@sph.com.sg

Path to greatness almost always starts with that first coach

A crime, a crying boy, a stroke of luck - sometimes this is how greatness begins.

In 1954, a 12-year-old Kentucky boy's red-and-white cycle is stolen and, swollen with emotion, he reports it to a policeman who teaches boxing in a gym. The boy wants to "whup" the thief; the policeman tells him: "Well, you better learn how to fight before you start challenging people that you're gonna whup."

So the boy goes to the gym and he inhales his new world: The sweat is like a fragrance to him, the sound of fist on leather is like a narcotic. The policeman, Joe Martin, who is the boy's first coach, never teaches him anything profound beyond planting his feet correctly, but he's done enough. He's given the boy direction. He has allowed Muhammad Ali to fall in love.

Passion needs a matchstick to ignite and often this comes from a first coach. They give athletes a first glimpse of their talent. They give enthusiasm a path. They allow, in just adjusting a correct fencing stance, for discovery to occur. They are the first chapters in a long sporting story.

Last fortnight, we reunited four Singaporeans - a rower, a fencer, a water polo player, a footballer - with their first sporting teachers and a lovely symbolism was apparent. Even as the athletes chase the future at the Asian Games, they know the value of these voices from their past.

First coaches aren't famous names, just faded figures from the athlete's past. They're not Stefan Edberg, not Alex Ferguson. They're just an unknown English teacher who loves rugby. Or the head of a physical education department who stays an hour later to help with your stance. Or the school coach who surfs YouTube to learn new techniques for you. You never think of all this when you're a kid: You don't even know you're being inspired.

First coaches are unrecognised, unrewarded, unheralded. No newspaper yells their names, no speech includes their names. When Novak Djokovic dedicated his Wimbledon title this year to his first coach, Jelena Gencic, who died last year, it was an act of unusual generosity. In sport, the present is always more celebrated than the past.

Matthew Syed, the British table tennis player turned columnist, wrote passionately on this subject recently: "I think of my first coach, Peter Charters, who spent almost every afternoon for 10 years working with the best table tennis players in a small suburb of Reading (in England)." This is teaching in anonymity, this is time for free, this is a first taste of dedication.

First coaches are neither master polishers nor fine-tuners, but some of them are dutiful construction workers and what they're building is you. They're assembling the early foundation of your possible greatness. Do one more round is the start of a work ethic. Kick the ball out, he's injured, is an introduction to etiquette. Push on, keep fighting puts you in touch with your willpower.

As a child, you're learning even without thinking about the education you're getting. But as an adult, stop for a moment and think. All those voices that are still in your head, telling you to keep your eye on the ball, to pass the ball, where did they come from? All that stuff you know, about how to correctly grip a gun, and to have respect for rules, who told you all this?

Maybe the first coach.

Athletes are massive, complicated compositions whose first parts are arranged by the first coach. A canoeing coach might kindle an affinity with water. A fencing coach may provoke the dormant competitor within you. They're not making a champion out of you, but by nurturing you in a small way, by challenging you, they're helping nurture the idea that there might a champion within you.

Most athletes outgrow their first coaches, for human beings anyway can't be limited to single teachers. But these meetings between them, which brought grins and photographs, memories and smiles, was also time to pause and consider a journey: If the medal represents the end of the athlete's travels, then the first coach signifies the start of that grand adventure.

rohitb@sph.com.sg

This article was first published on Sep 14, 2014.
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