ActivAsian News 活跃亚裔新闻

Kayley Feng discovers squash through ActivAsian

Kayley Feng has a new obsession in her life-squash. It’s a new fascination that she is thoroughly enjoying.  This love affair with squash is due to Harbour Sport’s ActivAsian project which facilitated the collaboration between Squash Auckland and the New Zealand Chinese Youth Trust (NZCYT) to promote Squash to the Chinese community. Harbour Sport’s ActivAsian project aims to increase participation of the Asian community in a wide variety of sports at all levels from athlete to coach.

Kayley, who is multilingual and an active youth leader in the Milford division of NZCYT, discovered her passion for squash through the project. Before the programme, Kayley played squash and badminton occasionally with friends but had never thought about taking up squash and definitely not a coaching course. All this changed in May 2011 when Squash Auckland ran a two hour squash session for the NZCYT holiday programme.

As a youth leader, Kayley had the job of assisting the coach Manu Yam in delivering the session to participants of the holiday programme. Initially, she had some reservations about delivering the session as it was done with a large group of around 16 participants, all with different abilities and skills. However, to her surprise, she thoroughly enjoyed the session and the sport. An opportunity arose for Kayley to take part in a Sputnix Squash coaching course run by Squash Auckland in an effort to develop multilingual coaches to grow their sport in the Asian community. Having a passion for working with children, Kayley took up the course immediately. Throughout the coaching course, Kayley’s interest in coaching squash grew beyond just enjoying working with children and she decided to take it further. She then started playing quash more regularly and even took up a Discovery Squash Coaching course. Kayley is now looking at coaching regularly during weekends at Belmont Park Racquets Club.

Squash Auckland is one of eight sports who are actively working with Harbour Sport’s ActivAsian project that comes under our Ethnic Engagement in sport. Others include Badminton North Harbour, Tennis Northern, Shore Rhythmic Gymnastics, Netball North Harbour, Harbour Golf, North Harbour Volleyball Association, and Auckland Petanque. Harbour Sport’s ActivAsian project has raised awareness of the importance in addressing the sporting needs of the Asian community on the North Shore and will continue doing so to encourage those like Kayley to explore their passion in sport and recreation.

June 2011 Newsletter - CLICK HERE