#1 - Butterfingers

Remember the times during P.E. classes where everybody is playing Captain's Ball? Your friend would throw the ball at you in hopes of a point but you'd misread the flight of the ball and helplessly watch it fly through your hands.

Everybody would burst into laughter, even yourself. How could such a blunder happen? Your friends would start digging into you, calling you names and you'd agree with them. "At the very least, this mistake of mine can make everybody laugh!" You'd think to yourself.

Until the whole dressing room is hurling blames and curses at you because you couldn't catch the ball.

The National School Games' Football category has always been a fantastic event in Singapore's youth sport. You feel like a professional player when you step onto the pitch. After a huge win, you'd run straight to your friends who watched and ask if they recorded your highlights - those highlights which you immediately post onto TikTok once you get home.

It was truly the pinnacle for every aspiring young athlete in the country.

But all that hype and excitement would slowly yet painfully die down once you step in between the sticks4. At a final nonetheless. You feel so much pressure on your shoulders, your legs are shaking, and your heartbeat is increasing rapidly. What used to be your dream playing in a stadium full of history, would soon turn into a nightmare.

As the clouds got darker as the time ticked, the rain slowly increased, and soon your gloves lose their grip. You start spilling shots you could've easily caught. Crosses start being unnecessarily punched out. Shots off the ground start speeding up... but so far you've held your nerve.

Ten minutes were left on the clock. You instructed your teammates to mark their opposition counterparts. Two of your defenders standing on each post. The referee blows his whistle, signalling the opposition's corner taker to step up. An in-swinging cross gets whipped in and your defender heads it away. The opposition's midfielder pounces on the loose ball. He takes a touch and shoots.

Your vision is slightly obstructed by the sea of players in the box. You struggle to get a good look at the ball and suddenly, you see it fly towards you. You raise out your hands to catch it, but rather than the ball sitting comfortably in your gloves, your average technique coupled with the rain allows the ball to slip off your grip.

And it took one simple tap-in for your already broken confidence to be completely shattered.

Ten minutes later, the referee would signal for full time. Some of your teammates fall onto the ground hiding their faces in their arms. Some stood and stared at the sky in agony. Some cried their eyes out. You cursed yourself. You may have made so many key saves to keep your school in the running, but you were the reason the final has been lost.

What felt like a torturous trophy ceremony was succeeded by the worst scolding you ever had in your life. Much worse than when your mother shouted and caned you for breaking a window when you played football at the Multi Purpose Hall2. 

Your teammates whose eyes were all red and puffy, had their eyes red in anger.

"What's wrong with you, Cheng? All that talk about wanting to go pro and you couldn't catch a simple ball?"

"Just quit football. We could've won if we had an actual 'keeper in goal."

"Next year we're stepping down, right? Might as well step down now so you don't screw us up for NSG again."

"Don't even think about COE3. Which club would want you?"

Abuse after abuse were hurled onto you. But you only started letting the waterworks go when your best friend came to your defense. Telling off the rest of your teammates to give it a rest while your captain pulls you aside to tell you to ignore them. The coach walking in to the commotion and having to sit you down and have a pep talk to salvage whatever confidence you had left.

The bus ride back to school was quiet. And so was the rest of the school year. You never spoke to anyone else besides your friends and teachers. You were labelled butterfingers every time you went to the field at recess. CCA1 was unbearable when every small mistake you made was retraced to that blunder you made.

It was the lowest you felt. But the least painful among the ones you'd soon face.

You vowed to push yourself everyday so as to not repeat what had happened the previous year. Training after training. Gymwork after gymwork. Exposure after exposure. To the point your life had gone unhealthily centered around your sport.

You want to make it to the COE levels. You want to make it to the youth national team. You want to make it to the professional scene. What was a harmless happy dream would turn into a buildup of intense physical and mental turmoil. A final that generally meant nothing for the main scope of things would turn into the major turning point of your life at only 15, turning 16.

That's Ng Cheng Hou. He doesn't ask for much.

He just wants to be the First Choice.