Backdoor

The story of Singapore women’s national basketball team:
an anthropological and visual inquiry as a reflection on the mental health and sporting culture of Singapore 

Basketball, is a game of opportunities. Chances you create, in movement, in motion. For your teammate, for your team,
and most of all, for yourself.

Mental health and sports were two words that are hardly mentioned together in the same sentence for decades. That was before the new wave of growing attention drawn to mental health amongst elite athletes. In fact, anxiety, and depression are not uncommon, they were just never openly talked about. While looking beyond the physical and mental state of self as an athlete, lies many barriers to overcome, more often than so, unsaid.

Being athletes in Singapore, the reality is that there is typically no space for full-time athletes to exist.

Those that do are usually those in individual sports. With a small sporting talent pool, having female team pro-athletes are almost non-existent. All, but these rare few, are practically juggling between a day job and a heavily packed training schedule, stretching their 24 hours to the limit. Given the stigma of mental health in Singapore, many do not broach the topic, much less in the sporting environment. Together with the lack of time in Singaporean athletes’ lives, conversations are tough to have.

This anthropological and visual research hopes to explore and contextualise the struggles, expectations, and breakthroughs of the female national basketball players as a reflection of the mental health and sporting culture of Singapore. By highlighting images and in-depth interviews taken from players that were part of the Singapore’s women basketball team, it seeks to tell a visual story of the pressure and path of a female Singaporean basketball player through their commitment, dedication and ultimately their performance in the sport.