By Angelin Yeoh
alltherage@thestar.com.my
PICTURE the typical jock from a teen movie, and you’ll probably imagine a tall, well-built guy in a varsity jacket who probably thinks an anthropologist is someone who studies dinosaurs.
Peter Ng, however is not your average jock. The 23-year-old lad is currently juggling life as a national basketball player and coach, and an undergraduate student at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia in Bangi, Selangor.
“It’s all about time management. I make sure that I go to all my lectures and tutorials. But when I do have to miss a class because of basketball tournaments, I make up for it by scheduling for extra classes and tuitions once the tournament ends.”
Ng started playing basketball as a 15-year-old secondary school student in SMK Sacred Heart in Sibu, Sarawak.
“I practice about four hours a day. My practice time is divided into two sessions and one of the things I have to do during practice is average about 200 shots into the hoop per hour,” he said.
Since the start of his basketball career in 2005, Ng has competed in 10 tournaments as a state basketball player. He has won three championships and was also awarded the Most Valuable Player title at the 2007 Malaysian Schools Athletic Championships under-18 tournament.
On top of that, Ng is also an accomplished coach. In 2010, the Sarawak Under-16 team he coached won the national Lum Mun Chak Cup. He also had a go at coaching kids at Milo’s recent Play More, Learn More camp in Kelana Jaya, Selangor.
“I think it’s important to get young kids more involved in sports. There are lots of good values in sports like teamwork and determination that they can pick up and apply into every aspect in life,” he said.
According to Aisyah Aris, a representative for Milo Play More, Learn More, Ng was selected to be a part of the campaign because he showed commitment not only to sports but also to other responsibilities.
“Peter suits the objective of our campaign really well because he’s a dedicated athlete and he’s also a student. Our campaign is aimed at getting more kids involved in sports and teaching them how to balance that with life’s other commitments,” said Aisyah.
Ng just recently completed back-to-back tournaments, competing at the South-East Asia Basketball Association Stankovic Cup with the national team and finishing second at the Majlis Sukan Universiti Sekolah tournament with the UKM team – and he’s still not done for the year. He still has tournaments in the Philippines and China between September and November, and he’ll also be at the Asian University Games at the end of the year.
Despite being a top ball player, Ng has his ‘kryptonite’. He is very careful to never let little things like food get in the way of his performance in a game. Again.
“Our coach told us to avoid spicy food and soy products before a game. I’m not entirely sure why but once we did have some soya bean before a game and that made us feel really lethargic. It really affected how we play. So yeah, never again.”
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