Year-Round Sport Training in AISG 

(Photo of the AISG Boys Varsity Volleyball Team winning the GISSA Cup in the 2024-25 Season. Photo from Coach Diego Buchheim Lopez.)  

By: Matthew H.

AISG should have year-round training to optimize student athletes’ performance and results. This statement can be controversial. Well, the recent results and the opinions of the varsity players in AISG have some strong points related to this topic.   

 One of the Varsity Cross Country runners, Grade 10 Kenta T., mentioned how Hong Kong International School (HKIS) has year-round training, “Yes other schools have sport all year around. I can’t compete with the other schools when I don’t train all year. Also, I don’t have any sports I want to do for season 2, I want to do cross country during this time as well.”  

According to what Kenta has said, HKIS is an Asia Pacific Activities Conference (APAC) school that offers year-round training for sports, which heavily impacted their results.   

From a data table from the APAC website provided by the Varsity Volleyball captain, Grade 12 Luca W., it shows that HKIS has finished in several top three results in APAC. Here are some of the recent results: third place in table tennis (2024), swimming champions (2023), runner-up in basketball (2023), basketball champions (2023), tennis champions (2018), and volleyball runner-up (2018).   

The data table does not simply just show the results, but the high-level performance and consistency of student athletes from HKIS, in multiple different sports. “Practice makes perfect,” mentioned by one of the Varsity Table Tennis players, Grade 11 Raaghav A.   

 (Photo of the digital version of banners of the 2023 champions from HKIS. Photo from the HKIS website.)  

Thus, year-round training also keeps the athletes in good shape and consistent.    

The Varsity Tennis seed 1, Grade 10 Franziska L., mentioned her opinion on why year-round training is necessary, “To maintain consistency of practice and to keep up with the skill levels of other APAC schools.”   

Some students may not know about the fact that AISG offers year-round training for swimming (also known as the swim club).   

Some of the dedicated swimmers that joined both season one swim club and season two Varsity Swimming have experienced the benefits of year-round training. In the annual Rams Swimming Invite that took place towards the end of October, the AISG swim team got a decent result of placing third out of ten international schools from cities around Guangzhou.    

The captain of the Varsity Swimming, Grade 11 Sunny L., pointed out the contributions of every swimmer (including both non-varsity and varsity swimmers) that led to success, “I believe our swim team has improved because most AISG swimmers in the 2024 Invite weren’t varsity members like last year, but they still won third which was a magnificent achievement.”  

However, some people may think that AISG does not have enough facilities and participants for off-season training sessions.   

One of our Cross-Country runners, Grade 10 Zakari G., agreed to this statement, “Some people may play multiple sports, so if every sport had year-round training, then people would only be able to join one sport.”  

The Varsity Volleyball Head Coach, Mr. Diego Buchheim Lopez, also agreed by saying, “Year-round training are always beneficial for sports programs and student athletes, it could be a way to increase development and high level of success in competitions. AISG cannot have a round year program due to the low population of students, bigger schools have bigger student body and therefore more individuals to participate and specialize in one or two sports, that’s why season-based athletes are the way for our school.”   

True, out of all twelve APAC schools, AISG has the lowest number of students, but giving a choice for students to choose whether they want to participate in off season sessions or not is also a decent idea.  

One of the Varsity Volleyball players, Grade 10 Itamar G., added on to why this is a decent idea: “To help athletes that can potentially become professionals.”    

Having the option of year-round training for every varsity sport at AISG is beneficial to both the school and student athletes. Something that our AISG student athletes, teachers/coaches, and the athletic department could think about would be: ‘The consistent dedication could lead to our teams becoming podium frequenters if our school provides year-round training for every varsity sport.’