Interview with former director of student affairs at Xisong Elementary School

To introduce this sport, we’d like to take Xisong Elementary School, our school, as an example.  The Xisong shuttleball team is one of the best shuttleball teams in Taipei.  Through the interview with Ms Chu, the former director of student affairs at Xisong Elementary School, we can have a bigger picture of how shuttleball develops at Xisong.

The bellow is the digest of her talk:

Shuttleball team at that moment

“In the very beginning, we only took part in dodge ball games.  However, it was easy to get injured in dodge ball games.  And our dodge ball team was new and short of training, so they felt frustrated in the games.  I started to think of developing an alternative sport that we can practice more and get good grades in the games.

There was no gymnasium in Xisong Elementary school.   Although we used to have a strong volleyball team, the players got injured often since they could only practice on the cement ground.

During our search for the alternative sport, we found shuttleball at Tanmei Elementary School.  Neither did It need a big space to practice nor players get injured easily.  Plus, it didn’t cost much.  I believed it was worth carry on such a sport at our school, therefore we formed our shuttleball game in 1993.

 At first, there was no teacher at Xisong knows how to kick shuttleball.  Mr. Chang, our section chief of P.E., hence went to Tanmei to learn it and came back to Xisong to recruit and train our players.

 The qualifications for our players are having good flexibility in moving, clever, and hard-working.  We were supposed to have both girls’ team and boys’ team.  However, the chorus and handball team at our school were mainly composed of girls.  It would be relatively difficult to recruit girl players.  That’s why we had boy players only.  Actually we have boy players only even now.

We had good grades in all games, such as runner-ups or third-places.  It was more difficult for us to get champions since Tanmei and Nakang had a longer history in shuttleball.

    When I was coaching the shuttleball team, I played shuttleball as well.  We used to have a teachers’ shuttleball team too.  In addition, we had held inter-classes games to see if there were any prospective players at our school.

        In a fact, shuttleball is similar to the ancient takraw, which was made of rattans and in the size between a shuttleball and soccer

After I retired, I seldom have a chance to coach or play shuttleball since it was not my profession.  However, if I can be helpful, I’m willing to do it.”

Before and Now

“When I was the director of student affairs, there were track and field team, handball team and shuttleball team under the athletics division.  Because our handball team always had a good grade and had to play games in other cities, I spent more time on it.  Besides, there no coach for our track and field team, I also had to partake in it.  Therefore it was mostly our section chief of P.E. in charge of the shuttleball.

It had been 16 years for our shuttleball team by now.  The famous artist Chun-Hsang Ho used to be one of the team member when he studied at our school.

Ever since I retired, I have known little about shuttleball now.  I have no idea how Taiwan of Taipei City popularizing this sport.  Nevertheless, I know there is shuttleball in Mainland China too.  Sometimes I read some news about it.”

The difficulty of popularizing shuttleball

“Shuttleball is less popular on campuses.  Although kicking is also the main movement in soccer, most of time the ball is on the ground and is easier to control.  However, it’s rather hard to kick the shuttleball toward the correct direction.  Even though the players sometimes use the chest to keep off the shuttleball, they still need their teammates to kick it cleverly and quickly. It’s really difficult.

In the meanwhile of popularizing shuttleball, we found that players feel frustrated easily, unless they are really patient and hard-working.  Some students even suggested the teacher not to have shuttleball lessons during their P.E. classes, because they had no improvement at all after a whole month’s practice.  For popularizing it, we need to make it more fun.”

Reflections

We had an interview with Ms Chu, our former director of student affairs last Friday.

    Ms. Chu had been the director of student affairs from 1992 to 1998.  In 1993, Xisong formed a shuttleball team.  According to Ms. Chu, though the volleyball team in Xisong was good, the players got injured frequently.  They wanted to have a substitute sport, and found shuttleball was suitable.  Shuttleball won’t make players injured and its court is smaller. It can be played alone too.  That was how the shuttleball team in Xisong formed.  Besides, we understand why there were no girl players in our shuttleball team.  Most of other teams or clubs were composed of girl then, and they are the same now.  

    Ms. Chu thinks that players feel frustrated easily when they are beginners, and it is why shuttleball can’t be popular.  I agree with that.