Sportacular & YouthOUT! 2010

10 April 2010

We returned home at 1am from Eunos Community Club, after packing and arranging the goodie bags and wrist tags for our BIG event. Fellow YEC members and I had looked forward to Sportacular & YouthOUT! 2010 for some time. After 6 months of planning, the YEC and the SLC will finally see the fruits of our effort.

Fearing of feeling soggy after a 3-hour sleep, I went for a jog instead. At 4am, the park connector was in total silence. I ran round the Eunos Petal Garden and envisioned how the whole event will run in the morning.

The chilli that Chee Lee threw round the Petal Garden didn't seem to work as the sight of flashing lightning greeted me from a distance.

At 5am, YEC members began transporting the 2,000 goodie bags from Eunos CC to the Petal Garden. Although a short distance, it was hell work. Fortunately and smartly, Faiq loaned out some mega trolleys from the Kaka fruit stall and our work was heavily leveraged upon.

SLC members joined in at 7am. As early as at 8.30am, residents start to queue up for their goodie bags and registering themselves at the Electronic Registration and Attendance-taking System (eRAS), which is a new system under pilot-testing.

I was the Master of Ceremony for Sportacular, a mega sports carnival featuring sports-related performances, sports-themed games and a sports league (basketball and street soccer tournaments). The event is held in support of Singapore 2010 Youth Olympic Games!

For each ticket for the event sold, $1 goes to the Bedok North Secondary School Needy Student Fund.

I was scratching my head hard for some time before I finally came up with this sports-themed stage game. Using a squash racket, pose and fashion walk in the most creative manner!

The rain finally came... but it lasted for just 10 minutes! Participants were not deterred by the wet weather and stayed around till the sun returned.

And their wait wasn't a waste because Lyo and Merly came short after! The two adorable mascots wowed the crowd and forced everyone to use their mobile phones to snap pictures. They were here together with the Guest-of-Honour, Mr Zainul Abidin Rasheed, Senior Minister of State for Foreign Affairs & MP for Aljunied GRC, to unveil the YOG wall. The YOG wall is the results of the creativity and hard work of students from Bedok North Secondary School.

The 3-hour gap before YouthOUT! began was a great time to take a rest. Most of the YEC members sacrificed sleep over the past few days to ensure an enjoyable experience for residents.

YouthOUT! is in its 5th consecutive run. First a void deck party, it slowly evolved into a full-scale outdoor dance party. This year's YouthOUT! is held to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the People's Association. As the motto goes, Bringing People Together.

The emcee is DJ Jeff from FM93.3!

Stilt walkers hyped up the crowd as they weaved through the enthusiastic crowd.

Gursewak and friends also performed a Bhangra Dance that got everyone dancing to the beat of the song.

It was heartening to see the crowd build up as the time passes on. The crowd grew so big that the sound engineer actually told me that he was concerned that his speakers could be toppled by the energetic crowd. Of course, this did not happen!

The 10 participating hip-hop dance teams that took part in the inaugural competition were judged by a judge (of course...) and a SMS voting system. This is the winning team:

The months of ticket selling and visiting residents house-to-house, the months of meeting and deliberations, the debate over details all paid off at the end of the day. The huge turnout for the event is another new high that the YEC achieved!