A Perfect Strike Towards Sporting Dreams

Graduation 2020: Through-Train Pathway to Diploma in Business Studies

National Development Squad bowler George Yin Xu has a clear focus on his sporting career and academic pursuits. He hopes to get into the National Training Squad and represent Singapore at the World or Asian Championships. Academically, he hopes to achieve a good grade point average that would allow him to get into his dream overseas university, the Wichita State University, which offers the best bowling programme in the world.

Working towards his dreams, George did not think twice about accepting the offer to join the customised through-train Diploma in Business Studies (DBS) course in his fourth year of studies at Singapore Sports School. This allows him to bypass the National Examinations to pursue the business course with a specialisation track in entrepreneurship, offered in collaboration with Ngee Ann Polytechnic. More importantly, with a bite-sized curriculum and flexible learning structure, the course will enable him to train and study effectively at the same time.

“Balancing sport and studies can be a hassle to any student-athlete no matter how well they have prepared for it. The DBS programme would benefit me greatly in both my sport and academic pursuit. For my sporting career, I will be able to benefit from the flexible structure which allows me to take time off from school to participate in competitions and trainings without worrying of missing classes. This will give me peace of mind to focus on the game, leading to better results. For my academic pursuit, the course is recognised by local and overseas universities. It will provide me with a wide range of future prospects in the business field, such as service operations, marketing, retailing, marketing communications, and human capital management. With a specialisation track in entrepreneurship, I can even start my own business,” shared George.

Besides that, the course will be conducted by Ngee Ann Polytechnic lecturers at Sports School itself which gives student-athletes an added advantage. “This does not only save me time to travel between lesson and training, but I will also get to enjoy the best-in-class Bowling Centre which is equipped with technology for video analysis, Specto, to test bowler’s accuracy and many more sports facilities. Furthermore, I can learn from the best coaches who have been patient with me whenever I struggle to apply a new skill or change my form physically,” said George.