By Dennis Nilsson
Mar. 3, 2007

Imagine yourself voluntarily postponing your graduation one year.

After four years of reading tedious academical articles and attending mind-numbingly boring labs, most students cannot wait to leave university behind. Who would stay of his or her own free accord?

Loh Kaijun, an electrical engineering major and ex-Eusoff Hall resident, did. He became a five-year undergraduate in order to win last year’s sepak takraw competition for his hall in the yearly Inter-Hall Games between the halls on the NUS campus..

“I told my parents I was going to take a second minor,” Loh says. “I didn’t want to end my fourth year without a gold medal.”

Loh stayed in Eusoff Hall throughout his five years in NUS and represented it every year in the IHG in several sports of which sepak takraw became the most important. His fourth and final year was a disappointing one in the court.

Failing to win the Inter-Hall Games as well as Eusoff’s own Inter-Block Games, and seeing the sepak takraw competition cancelled at the Asian University Games, Loh was upset.

“I felt a kind of loss,” he says. “It was our final game (IHG 2005), supposed to be a gold medal for our hall.”

He made the choice to take one more year as a student.

A friend of Loh from EH, Yap Kian Yaw, was surprised by that decision.

“I thought that was quite a waste of time,” Yap says. “I told him before, it was kind of stupid to pay one more year of school fees just to play.” But Yap had to acknowledge that people have different priorities.

“He loves sepak takraw. He wanted to win the gold very badly,” Yap says.

Loh says he had a further motivation to stay on for another year to play IHG again. He wanted to play against and beat the best player in NUS, who was from rivals Temasek Hall. In the 2006 final, Loh got his chance.

“That previous night, I was having high fever,” he says, adding that his friends supported him.

Loh and EH eventually won and brought the sepak takraw gold to EH for the first time. While admitting that Temasek was a very strong team, Loh and his friends had their strengths as well.

“It was a battle of minds, not skills,” Loh says. “I was fighting for my hall, for my batch and for my friends.”

“It was worth it staying on,” he says. “This place (EH) has given me a lot. I wanted to give something back before I left,” he says.

Fourth-year mechanical engineering major, Nyein Chan, has played both with Loh in the NUS varsity team and against him representing Raffles Hall in the IHG.

“He (Loh) has a never-say-die attitude. He always chases the ball,” says Nyein, who is sad that the 2007 version of IHG was without the participation of Loh, he adds.

“He’s a good player, so I wanted to see him play,” Nyein says.

Finally graduated and with the IHG gold medal in hand, Loh is not considering a future in competitive sports.

“In Singapore you cannot survive playing sports. Especially not takraw,” he says.