Where do judo players go after high school?

Many states have judo teams training for SUKMA. These are usually secondary school students. Their clubs can get allowances for them to train and travel to competitions etc. Many promising athletes emerge from these programs.

The question is: Where do they go after they finish secondary school? If they go to college or university, chances are there isn't a judo club at their institution of higher learning. This is not Singapore where practically every university, every polytechnic and every junior college has a judo club of some sort.

We run a fledgling judo program at Sunway University but we don't know of any other college or university in the Klang Valley that has a judo program. Maybe there are others but we haven't heard of it. Even UPM which has at least one national player studying there has no judo program (as of yet). So, how?

If a SUKMA player happens to go to college or university that's located in the same city as their home club, they could still train there. But more often than not, these students will end up moving to another city in another state to do their tertiary education. Where can they go to train if they want to still continue competitive judo training.

Let's look at the Klang Valley, were most of the top public and private universities are. As mentioned before, other than Sunway, we don't know of any colleges/unis that have a judo program.

There are several judo clubs in the Klang Valley but almost all of them focus on children. A promising athlete in his late teens will not be able to get into good fighting shape training with a bunch of 10-year olds.

The absence of judo clubs in colleges/universities and the fact that most judo clubs in the Klang Valley are children-oriented means that top athletes in their prime have nowhere to train. They can jog and do weight training but they can't do judo.

This is a problem the powers-that-be in Malaysian judo need to address if they hope to build champions.