Changing the sport ecosystem

USSA Malaysia was founded in 2008 to offer sport science courses in management and coaching to local coaches and administrators. Since those early beginnings USSA Malaysia has taught physical education training to Malaysian teachers, created the Fit4Life module of the Khidmat Negara program, and collected over 40,000 fitness testing records on Malaysian schoolchildren.

Our continuing mission is to help change the sport ecosystem in Malaysia. By focusing on education we can address issues in Malaysian sport that we feel we can impact for the better. Some of these issues are:

Education

Training courses in physical education, coaching, and sport management have been part of the USSA Malaysia educational component since 2008. Although these courses have typically been offered to select groups our current plans include opening them to public participation. Information about this will be found on the Academics page when it is available.

Athlete development

Rather than leave developing high performance sport completely to chance we believe that creating athletic ability is not only possible but represents the most important sport management issue in Malaysia.

By implementing the long-term athlete development model (LTAD) the number of youngsters involved in sport at all levels will increase.

Physical literacy

Being physically literate enables one to engage in many healthy activities throughout one's life. It is essential to having a healthy, active lifestyle.

Physical literacy is also the backbone of the athlete development process. Children brought up with access to effective physical education programs and opportunities to participate in a variety of long-term youth sport programs will eventually form the base of an effective and successful national sport program.

Development support

Another important aspect of sport development is data. Sport and athlete development is primarily a management issue. Decisions must be data driven.

USSA Malaysia has developed online applications that can provide information about the pool of potential athletes. This may help sport associations, coaches, parents, and other interested groups understand the athlete base better than they do now.

We have created systems for distributed data collection for various research projects. This expands the reach that any research endeavor has by allowing for a significantly larger number of researchers/data collectors. All data can be used to make informed decisions related to sport and athlete development.