Badminton
ONG SOO KIT (’ 53 ) AS A YOUNG MAN ; WITH FRIENDS ; AND AS AN OLDER MAN
ONG SOO KIT : HOW A LONG-LOST SON OF SCOTCH WAS FOUND
Perseverance leads to success – an address scrawled on an envelope
‘ Who is the greatest badminton player that Scotch College has ever produced ?’ This is a recurring debate among reminiscing players of the Old Scotch Badminton Club . Given the difficulties of comparing players from different eras , it ’ s a question to which there is no satisfactory answer . However , the question of who is the highest-achieving Scotch Collegian in badminton may finally have been settled .
In May 2018 , School Archivist , Paul Mishura , discovered that Ong Soo Kit (’ 53 ) – a Chinese Malayan who attended Scotch from 1951-53 – had won the men ’ s doubles at the Australian Badminton Championships in 1960 and 1961 . However , since leaving Scotch in 1953 , all contact with him had been lost .
With this inspiring discovery , I took on the mission to find this long-lost son of Scotch , and to reconnect him with his alma mater . However , armed with just three pieces of information – name , date of birth , and address at enrolment – and the stringent privacy protection laws of today , the improbability of finding him was not lost on me . The task was akin to looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack , with questions surrounding whether the needle was still there , in circumstances in which a search of the haystack would not be permitted !
Nevertheless , while on a family trip to Malaysia a month later , I optimistically set to work . That optimism was immediately challenged at my very first stop : the National Registration Department of Malaysia ( essentially the super-ministry encompassing Home Affairs ,
Immigration , and Citizenship , as well as all records relating to births , deaths , and marriages ).
Despite explaining my mission and providing him with the only three pieces of information that I had , as I feared , the officer shook his head and stated that privacy protection laws prevented him from providing any information to me .
Not to be discouraged , I persevered through other avenues of enquiry , reaching out to the Badminton Association of Malaysia and my many relatives in Malaysia over the next six months . However , these enquiries only yielded anecdotal recollections from relatives of a person with the same name .
With no further leads , I found myself back at the National Registration Department of Malaysia at the end of 2018 for one last try . On this occasion , through good fortune – or pity – the officer ‘ provided me with some information informally ’: the last known address of a person named Ong Soo Kit scrawled onto the back of an envelope and ‘ carelessly ’ left on the counter top in front of me ! ( Unsurprisingly , this address was different to the one held by Scotch !)
With that address , initial contact was made – and a pleasantly surprised Ong Soo Kit responded positively and recalled fondly his days at Scotch . Happily , a long-lost son of Scotch College had finally been found .
DANNY TEE KEAT TAN (’ 04 ) – COACH OF SCOTCH ’ S 1ST BADMINTON TEAM ; PRESIDENT , OLD SCOTCH BADMINTON CLUB
www . scotch . vic . edu . au Great Scot 71