National Disability League
The National Disability League (NDL) is a multi-display sports tournament. The league is held over a period of a few months yearly, to promote sports and nurture healthy lifestyle amongst the disabled as well as providing local competitiveness opportunities. It serves as a platform for people with disabilities to participate in the event on both a recreational and competitive level, as well as to create better awareness of disability sports amongst the able-bodied community.
Introduced by the Singapore Disability Sports Council (SDSC) in 2006, the National Disability League (NDL) replaced the National Disability Games which started from 2002. This new league format allowed participants to compete across three months, increasing their opportunities for exposure and social interaction.
Between the years of 2002 and 2005, the spirit of the games has grown tremendously as the National Disability Games functioned as a series of disability sports events spread over seven challenging and competitive days. This strongly signifies the increasing number of disabled people who are keen to participate in sports-related activities and it confirms the proven popularity of this league structure.
In 2006, SDSC has transformed the National Disability Games into the very first National Disability League (NDL), spreading across two to three months of highly anticipated competitive sports experience and exposure. NDL had provided a sustainable platform to enhance the performance growth and 'feel' of competition during the three months. By inducting a sustainable platform, it allowed athletes to review areas of improvement in their performances and strive to improve during their next round of competition.
NDL 2009 saw the highest participation rate ever with 875 participants. These were a diverse mix of various disability groups from 12 voluntary welfare organisations, 6 special schools and 39 individuals. This was a remarkable achievement as compared to the previous years:
- 2008 - 687 participants (with 7 sports)
- 2007 - 518 participants (with 11 sports)
- 2006 - 357 participants (with 13 sports)
The 15 sports offered in 2009 were archery, badminton, basketball, boccia, bowling, chess, equestrianism, futsal, handcycling, lawn bowls, powerchair football, sailing, shooting, table tennis and wheelchair basketball.
Besides its emphasis on sustainable sports development, NDL focuses on spotting sports talents as well and serves as an avenue to select athletes to represent Singapore at International and regional competitions such as the 1st Asian Youth Paralympic Games 2009 in Tokyo, Japan and the 5th ASEAN ParaGames 2009 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Today, NDL has a unique position for sports development as it allows all athletes to have a continuous and sustainable competition platform. It gives each athlete the feel of competition, placing them to play with athletes of different performance level, leading them to re-strategize their paradigm of winning games.