Colin Foo: Supporting Sports School To Bring Out The Best In Student-Athletes

Parent Feature: Colin Foo

By day, 48-year old Colin Foo is a lead technical instructor at SIA Engineering, and by night, he’s the highly respected and enthusiastic chairman of the Sporting Parents Network (SPN) committee. The volunteer group set up in 2006 aims to instil healthy values in student-athletes and nurture their sport and academic potentials.

Colin is the father of IBDP Year 6 bowler Evangeline Foo Shi Hui who is in Singapore Bowling Federation’s National Developmental Squad. The chairmanship term is usually for two years, but Colin has been asked to extend one more year in 2021, just in time for his daughter’s graduation from the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme this year. This also speaks volumes of Sports School’s and the committee’s trust in Colin’s leadership abilities in his role.

“I joined SPN with the intention to contribute back to the school as a sport parent. I feel honoured to serve as the Chairman of SPN for these three years as the role entails great responsibility and commitment and unique challenges. The main highlight of this role is definitely organising of the annual Sports School Open House and supporting the school’s outreach at MOE’s Junior Sports Academy selection event. These are big scale events that require the SPN to engage many parent volunteers to work closely with school staff to make these events a resounding success. In fact, I would like to take this opportunity to thank all parent volunteers who have stepped forward to help out at school events.”

Known for being a chairman who “walks the talk”, Colin is a constant presence at school activities, making sure to garner parents to help out. He is also always the first person to arrive when SPN meetings take place.

“The most important goal for SPN is to establish a closer network amongst the parents in supporting our student-athletes and to foster healthy communication and interaction between staff and parents. With this in mind, during my tenure as Chairman, the SPN Exco team has set up an SPN Facebook for parents to share their memorable and proud sporting moments with their child as a student-athlete. In addition, we also created a new role for a Boarding Coordinator, to better facilitate the communication channels between student-athletes, parents and boarding office.”

“Some of the challenges I faced as Chairman was to bridge communication between parents and the school over some sport and boarding issues. As a stakeholder of the school, SPN has worked with the school to resolve some of these issues. The reason why we managed to resolve these issues is largely due to the team effort displayed explicitly in SPN Exco members like Patrick Elangovan, Melvin Lau, Alfred Chua and Kuk Hun Yi, just to name a few. These are experienced parent volunteers who have served in the Exco for more than 5 years.”

His constant support and leadership as Chairman is a legacy he will leave behind, and he continues to inspire other SPN members to be involved in school activities, meetings as well as champion positive values for young athletes in the school.