Our Multi Sports Professionals

Tan Wei Leong

Programme Manager

As an EM3 primary school student from a disadvantaged background, discouraged by poor school grades and entrapped in petty gangsterism, Tan Wei Leong could easily have ended up a grim statistic. But Wei Leong discovered his own athletic prowess in Primary Five and with this first brush with Hope, a consuming passion for sport was born.

Since then, with timely guidance from the Samaritans in his life, Wei Leong has never looked back in his headlong pursuit of sports excellence, first as an athlete, then as a coach. For the future, he hopes to be as an ambassador of sport as well.

The upliftment of lives through sport, particularly for the disadvantaged, is central to Wei Leong’s mission. While the success of a coach is conventionally gauged by the silverware he wins, Wei Leong sees a bigger, more meaningful and inclusive role for sports in shaping his young charges’ lives. Thus, while not everyone can be a champion athlete, in Wei Leong’s book, everyone can enjoy a healthier and fun-filled life en route to becoming a better human being through sports participation.

His difficult early background has whetted Wei Leong’s appetite for lifelong learning. When once he never envisioned studying beyond his N Levels, in 2011, Wei Leong completed the University of Wolverhampton ’s B.Sc (Sports Coaching) course with honours and at the top of his Singapore class. He is currently pursuing his Masters degree in sports management at the Sheffield Hallam University .

Since 2011, Wei Leong has been an accredited NROC Master Coach. He has twice been awarded the prestigious National Coach Recognition Award by the Singapore Sports Council in recognition of his sterling contributions to developmental coaching. Wei Leong holds Levels 2 (General) and 4 (Sprints and Hurdles) coaching certificates from the International Amateur Athletics Federation, graduating consistently among the top three coaches in his cohort.

Wei Leong’s coaching career began while he was still a polytechnic student in 1998. With 13 years of coaching experience behind him, he has identified and groomed many national junior athletes. His silverware from the annual National Primary Schools Championships includes a total of eight divisional championship trophies. These aside, Wei Leong counts teachers, a distinguished army officer, a vice-principal and a company director among his former athletes, evidence of his emphasis on the inculcation of life values through sports.

As a manager, Wei Leong has organized meets both in Singapore and Malaysia and led teams to regional track events. As a trainer of coaches, Wei Leong has opened doors for promising individuals to begin their coaching careers by presenting them with training and employment opportunities. To his profound satisfaction, the teams under his protégé coaches won five divisional titles for their respective schools at the 2011 National Primary Schools Championships.

At 31, Wei Leong’s current focus is to employ his coaching and management philosophy in Mastereign’s multi-disciplinary sports courses and prepare his senior national athletes for the SEA Games.  His Vision for Mastereign programme through fellow coaches, “First class Athlete values, winning second”.