Lioness Summer Chong, 17, Hopes US Stint Will Help Her Improve

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 Football: Lioness Summer Chong, 17, hopes US stint will help her improve

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Kimberly Kwek

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Singapore football

Published Jun 25, 2022, 08:01 PM

SINGAPORE - In the Lionesses' 4-0 defeat by Hong Kong on Thursday (June 23), Singapore coach Stephen Ng took the chance to blood new talent and give four uncapped players their national team debuts.Among the quartet was 17-year-old forward Summer Chong, who has stayed on Ng’s radar even after moving to the United States to study and train since last September.On her Lionesses debut, she said: "I was a little nervous, especially since I was starting because I just felt like I wanted to make an impact and didn't want to mess up anything. I felt that it was a good experience and that I played good."Summer will be hoping to build on that experience on Sunday night, when the Lionesses take on Hong Kong again in a friendly at the Jalan Besar Stadium ahead of next month's Asean Football Federation (AFF) Women's Championship in the Philippines.While Ng is willing to give young players like her a chance to play, the teenager has also taken the development of her football career into her own hands.Seeking more playing opportunities, Summer moved to New Hampshire last year to study and train on a scholarship at High Mowing School.This came about after she was approached by Sportsync, a student-athlete recruitment agency specialising in securing sport scholarships for students from Asia to pursue education in North America and the United Kingdom.Summer eventually chose High Mowing School, a residential academy with an attached football club Black Rock FC, as it was the closest to where her US-based relatives live."I've always wanted to play football abroad because I wanted to gain match experience as in Singapore there wasn't really much because of Covid restrictions," said Summer who began playing football at 13 as a co-curricular activity at Queensway Secondary School.While her dream of going abroad to train materialised, her US stint got off to a rocky start as she was unable to adapt to the weather conditions there.After just one training session with her school, she was down with the flu and there were times when even getting out of bed was hard.She was also placed under quarantine as part of safety precautions. While she was confined to her room, she tried to keep herself occupied by doing core workouts, watching videos and reading books.Summer said: "It was frustrating at first that I couldn't just walk around. The first week, I was quite excited to meet the team, go to the new school, to see America itself and when I went out, I got sick. I just went back to the dormitory to get some rest and I thought I'd recover the next day but I didn't."After a less than ideal first month, Summer has gained some valuable experience on the pitch as she trains with players from other countries as well as the boys from her school. Initially, she struggled to get used to these players' aggressiveness.She said: "In the US, the players are aggressive, they will keep defending, they won't stop. It's more challenging for me because they're very physical too."When I played my first match, I was struggling a lot because I didn't expect the players to be like that."To adapt, Summer would practise one-on-one drills with her teammate after training.Several months in, she has racked up some experience playing competitive football in her school and club season, even winning a competition with her team last month.The Grade 11 student is looking forward to more of such opportunities and hopes to make it to a Division 1 college after she graduates next year.Ng is hoping that the 1.71-metre Summer will shine in future.He said: "She has good physical presence and technical ability, I have been keeping tabs of her in US from her games played there via video. She's a good talent to develop."

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