Of IMU CUP

So the long awaited end-of-IMU Cup came finally. Apart from feeling relieved and rejoiced, I feel also some what empty.

To be honest, I am really disappointed at the organisation of IMU cup. Somehow this IMU cup proved to be so much messier than the last one. It's never easy organising events at such a large scale, 3-cheers to Ivy Ang and team who did such a great job last year.

But this year, there were so many misunderstandings, so many miscommunications. There was no proper system to relay information to batches and team captains, no proper set of rules and guidelines to assist each individual event, worse of all, no proper definition of players who are eligible to participate.

Want to hear the cause of a major hoo haa?? It all revolves around not letting a BioMed student play for our batch, which in my opinion, totally contradict the actual meaning and sportsmanship spirit for this IMU cup. 1st of all, no student should be disallowed from playing a sport if they wish to. How is unity amongst batches, and fostering of friendship ever going to take place if some students can't participate? 2ndly, there was no proper method of disseminating the information stating that BioMed senior batch are not allowed to play, hence all the miscommunication and misunderstanding, causing my batch to lose a gold, a bronze, and a possible silver medal.

The event I was most disappointed in was, Cheerleading. Maybe it was because I am blinded by the fact that my team did not win, maybe it was because they did not give out any cash prize together with best showmanship award, or maybe because the organisation simply sucks. You tell me whether my judgement is biased or what. How can the judges change the marking scheme without informing all the captains? How can they allow prohibited props to be used when the rules clearly stated so and other teams tried to refrain from using them? And how can you reprimand a captain for booking a venue to let her teammates use for practise, when in fact other team captains did not complain simply because they did not think ahead of time at the point of booking? You tell me where is the spirit of sportmanship, the spirit of sharing and caring?!?

But apart from the lousy IMU cup organising, there were a lot of values and memories I gained through this one month. I realise that despite being separated into different batches, IMU is pretty united as a whole. I made so many new friends and crossed paths with so many nice people. Like the sem 3 girl who patched up my bleeding knee during netball, or the sem2 cheerleaders who were always fooling around with us. This is the true spirit of sportmanship, despite competing against one another, when it comes to outside games, regardless of status, we are all one big family.

Its not like me to come up with wordy wordy post, but this one has to be one, because I have so many thoughts to sound it out. The next thing I like to talk about, is Cheerleading.

I started out being the cheerleading captain last year because our sports rep Denise knows no other students who has cheerlead before. Upon accepting the task, I would say, I regretted it, honestly speaking. Its was such a chore to be in charge of 18 people (last year) who has no idea what cheerleading is about, and most of them having no prior experience in dancing, or stunting. For two months, I was struggling with my timetable, skipping lectures so that I get more time to study for summatives then, at the same time having practises which was so mentally draining by the end of the day. Thankfully I had Chloe to help me out in the entire process and my burden was shared with her. And when finally cheerleading was over and done with, I could breath. Although I had a lot of fun, and an awesome team, I swore to myself then and there, that I do not want to do this over again the next year, and was hoping someone else could take over my captain role.

But then came IMU cup 2008, and if I don't lead the team again this time, noone will. So reluctantly I started doing my job again, first step of all was to come up with the music. Big thanks to Geowin for helping me get started. Then came the toughest part, recruiting more members. Some of the old members were not eligible to join us anymore, some were too busy with SRC duties, we needed more people, so I went around asking every soul in my batch if they were interested. Soon enough, I had a team of 21 peeps, fabulous people if you ask me, and then came the troublesome part, practises.

With only one month to train these not-so-experience cheerleaders into awesome kick ass pro's, we needed to intensify our trainings, which were so tiring on me. Almost everyday my timetable starts from 8am in the morning usually with volleyball trainings, if not it will be badminton or swimming, and it ends with cheerleading at night all the way till 10pm. That's not all, there were the out of my timetable chores such as planning stunts, formations, thinking about the next practises, fitting in family time (failing miserably), and all the arguing with other captain over venue and rules. Chloe was a big help. Probably because she had more experience in cheerleading she seemed to be more professional at handling all the necessary needs.

After all the huzzle buzzle the day finally arrived. My team was AWESOME. I mean, every movement was in unity, every stunt went perfectly, everyone was smiling, energized, PERFECT. I was so sure we could get top 3. I watched back the video and beemed with pride that these people were my teammates. Little did I know they changed the score sheet at the last minute and there was nothing anyone could have done about it. Speak about reality that sucks. So many people said that we deserve better, and I speaking from experience certainly know that WE ARE BETTER.

But at the end of the day, all that matters is the memories and experiences gained along the way. I have to say I am glad I remained being the captain despite all the duties because I truly love my team.

To sum it up, I am glad IMU cup happened, despite all the setbacks, and I am glad it is finally over, though I have to admit that I'll miss it a lot. Especially cheerleading.

ps : Previously a part of this post addressed a volleyball club organising problem, since the issue may be or could be just a speculation, I apologise what I wrote about it and took it down.