Im an amateur athlete

Amateur sports are sports in which participants engage largely or entirely without remuneration. The distinction is made between amateur sporting participants and professional sporting participants, who are paid for the time they spend competing and training. In the majority of sports which feature professional players, the professionals will participate at a higher standard of play than amateur competitors, as they can train full-time without the stress of having another job. The majority of worldwide sporting participants are amateurs.

Last week in Miami LeBron James played a game of basketball in front of 18, fans. After the game, James wrote his signature on things for people he had never met before. Most Americans are not LeBron James. We are, instead, a nation of amateur athletes. Over , NCAA athletes compete in a Division III sport, a grueling endeavor for which athletic-based financial aid is literally non-existent, and lucrative professional careers are only marginally more frequent.

Nicholas Lye had been a digital content intern at SportSG back in , having pursued a related course at Singapore Polytechnic. Besides holding a camera and toiling away in front of a computer, however, he could frequently be seen chatting with colleague and local sprint legend C. Kunalan, discussing running techniques and the like. This year, the year-old will graduate with a degree in sport science from the Nanyang Technological University, and now he hopes to concentrate on training and finding a club — not just for the passion, but also to reach his ultimate goal of making it to the national SEA Games team.

We have all watched elite sporting action before, from the regional SEA Games, to larger-scale ones like the Commonwealth Games, or even those on a global level like the Olympics. We have witnessed the highs and lows of competition that an athlete goes through — the anguish, the exhilaration, and all the feelings in between. However, closer to home, such action could also be found in our local communities, where amateur athletes young and old have been competing in meets such as the Singapore National Games, which will be making a return this August as part of GetActive! These amateur athletes are not out to break the world record, nor to clinch an international title, but they are no less enthusiastic or energetic than those competing on the world stage. With less possibility of achieving international glory and fame compared to professional athletes, amateur athletes placed competition experience as a top priority, as Chua noted.