Sports

She works and studies by day, but at night, she puts on a new identity. Unlike the professional male players, as a female soccer player, Ma Chak Shun, 23, trains with her soccer team after sundown. Ms. Ma is involved with the Hong Kong women's national football team and a local club named Happy Valley Athletic Association Women. Yet, Ms.Ma is still not considered a professional player. “Males can play professional soccer, they can earn money by playing soccer. But females can't," she said. The trend of more females joined the sport in recent years is apparent. According to Legislative Council document, as of the interim review in 2018, there are 3,140 women in Hong Kong involved in various women's soccer programs held by Hong Kong Football Association, which increased by more than 70% compared with last year.  As the group is getting bigger, local female players say they still have to face diverse difficulties in their career because they are on the way seeking for the same rights and treatment same as male players. No professional soccer means no salary. Male players' team participating in Hong Kong Premier League can make money with their training expenses paid and salary monthly. There is no professional league for women's soccer in Hong Kong, so female players will not get paid. Most of them treat soccer as a hobby and have other full-time jobs.  "We can just seek it for fun, for leisure and for our dream," said Chan Tsz Ching, a student soccer player in Hong Kong Baptist University. HKBU provides funding for all University sports teams, and they also have sponsors to cover the expenses of overseas training or matches. Clubs out of school are not as lucky as school teams. Hong Kong Football Association sponsors Hong Kong team but not clubs, …

During a rugby tournament held in Happy Valley, 24-year-old coach Winnie Cheung Wing-yin gathered her team to discuss a variety of strategies to win the match. Crowding together at the side of the field, the members watched intently as Ms. Cheung demonstrated strategies verbally, while also flailing her arms and mimicking ball throwing movements. Standing next to her was an interpreter helping to translate her spoken points through sign language. Ms. Cheung is partially deaf and she's one of the Hong Kong Rugby Union's oldest members and now coaches for the deaf rugby team, which has 20 members. She was one of the first deaf participants to join the deaf rugby programme back in 2009. Back then, she was still a pupil at Chun Tok School, one of the local deaf schools that cooperated with HKRU. Ms. Cheung currently receives funding from Laureus, a sports organisation that honours individuals and teams along with sporting achievements. Her efforts throughout the years have landed her a career to work as a coach and develop the next generation of players for the deaf rugby team. "Deaf rugby has changed me in many ways because I was able to meet more people," said Ms. Cheung. Deaf rugby coach Winnie Cheung strategies how her team members can win a rugby tournament in Happy Valley. She believes that hard work and effort is the key to overcome her adversities. According to the United Nations, engaging in sports has the potential to reduce such barriers as it can showcase an individual's skill sets, which makes others take note of their disabilities less. However, people with disabilities are more likely to face discrimination and negative perceptions in society. Through these stigmas, they may be excluded from opportunities which is vital for their social and physical development, including participating …

Putting on swimwear, goggles, snorkel and fins, Henry Chan was not going to jump in the ocean, but instead play hockey underwater. Underwater hockey requires a lot of skills, but be good at swimming isn’t the most important. "I swim very fast, but there's no point. The game is thirty minutes. You cannot swim all the way," said Mr. Chan, one of the founders of Hong Kong Underwater Hockey Association. Similar to ice or field hockey, in an underwater hockey game, two teams compete to push a puck with a hockey stick across the bottom of a swimming pool into the opposing team's goal. "For me, the first step that I think difficult is to really get myself calm underwater," Mr. Chan said, "but the most difficult is to have a team mentality to play for team, not only by yourself." Underwater hockey has been around for decades in Canada, England, USA and Australia but has only recently taken off in Asia, mostly in the Philippines and Malaysia. The sport has its own World Championship, which first took place in 1980, according to World Confederation of Underwater Activities. Hong Kong has one team that is trying to compete on an international level. Noel Luis Suarez Ignacio, another founder and the head coach of HKUHA, said breathing was crucial to this sport. "Every time you think your sport is hard, try doing it while holding your breath," he said. "I don't need swimmers, I need singers," Mr. Ignacio said the physically demand when playing underwater is to "stretch lung muscle and increase lung capacity". Mr. Chan has played this special kind of hockey since 12 years ago when he was studying in an university in America, where he failed to find a swimming team but came across an underwater hockey club. …