Malaysia Association of Dodgeball and TU’s Team Malaysia Educate Public about Dodgeball
by Felicia
KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia Association of Dodgeball (MAD) and Malaysia’s Dodgeball Team, from TU, were put to the task to promote dodgeball as a healthy sporting activity at the ‘Fit for Life’ event held in early April.
Secretary of MAD, Yeo Wai Tat said, “Dodgeball is a growing sport that people play on their own, socially.”
To date, there are 135 dodgeball clubs nationwide, but only a handful are competitive.
The sport is popular amongst fitness and weight loss gurus because the burst of intense activities is a great way to lose calories.
Being one of the sports promoted at the event, MAD hoped to increase the popularity of the sport.
Yeo said, “There will also be a dodgeball clinic — teaching the public about the sport, and dodgeball demonstration training regime with Jason Moriaty.”
Team Malaysia, TU’s representative, had a tournament as the highlight to introduce dodgeball sport science: mainly Bio Mechanics (throwing techniques) and Physiology with Jason Moriarty, MAD’s High Performance Director/ Coach.
Captain of Team Malaysia, Sathid Punyawan said, “We are here to promote dodgeball to the public, show them what is dodgeball. We showed them a friendly game of dodgeball, then we taught them how to play dodgeball at the dodgeball clinic, and the rules in dodgeball, and the steps to be a better dodgeball player.
“We also included fitness into dodgeball — you need to stay fit to be playing dodgeball. So we taught them the steps to take to stay fit, to be able to continue in the dodgeball game. A dodgeball game can vary from time, maybe 10 minutes a game or 40 minutes per game. As well as the fitness session with Mr. Jason to show you how to enhance your physical, and your stamina, strength and core strength.”
Team Malaysia have been training for more than 2 months in preparation for the 4th Annual Dodgeball Championship in Las Vegas August this year.
The team even had a friendly match against dodgeball team Hydra at the “Fit For Life” event.
With the recent initiation of dodgeball team “Falcon Warriors” at SK Puncak Alam, MAD planned to grow the sport from developing grassroots at schools and get dodgeball into the Majlis Sukan Sekolah Daerah (MSSD) syllabus.
In the long-term, MAD planned to develop more platform for players from grassroots to represent Malaysia.
