Home Team Sports: Celebrating Camaraderie through Wakeboarding

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Putting their strength and balance to the test, officers from various Home Team Departments got together for an afternoon of wakeboarding.

“Don’t pull! Relax! Bend your knees!”

These were the three commands most commonly heard across the waters near Seletar Island as Home Team officers tried their hands (and feet) at wakeboarding, most of them for the first time.

This wakeboarding session was planned by Home Team officers but was subsidised by the Home United Sports and Recreation Association (HUSRA) which recently introduced the Home Team Interest Groups Fund to support recreational interests of Home Team officers.

It hopes to encourage Home Team officers with similar interests to come together and organise similar activities for fellow colleagues.

A sport for people of all ages, wakeboarding is very much like snowboarding, but you do it on water instead of snow.

The main objective is to stay buoyant, and perform as many tricks (jumps and spins) as possible while a boat pulls you at 18-23 miles per hour.

Wakeboarding is included in the X-Games which features exciting non-Olympic sports such as sky surfing, rock-climbing, skate-boarding and mountain-biking.

It is also one of the fastest growing water sports in Singapore.

On 31 August 2013, some 29 officers got a taste of how fun and difficult the sport of wakeboarding can be.

“It is certainly a whole new experience. I thought I was good with board based sports, but wake boarding definitely challenged me with its unique dynamics and steep learning curve,” said Corporal (Cpl) Win Soon, from the Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF).

Cpl Soon has been an avid snowboarder for years.

Veteran wakeboarder and Senior Investigation Officer with the Commercial Affairs Department, Mr Lee Shang Xing took this chance to meet fellow Home Team colleagues and fine-tune his boarding skills as well.

His impressive jumps and attempts at performing backrolls (doing a “backward” cartwheel mid-air) inspired fellow officers to take up the sport and push their limits.

Officers were seen encouraging one another as they struggled to get in the right posture behind the boat despite multiple falls into the water.

“This is definitely a good avenue to bond with fellow Home Team officers. It was very difficult trying to stand up, but my boat members were encouraging and supportive. I will try it again for sure,” said Corporal, Izwan Amaludin, 22, Personal Supervisor with the Singapore Prison Service.