袁婧怡

English

Yuen Ching-yi (Sally), born 9 June 1999, is a member of the Hong Kong women's national softball team, playing mainly as an outfielder; her full-time job is as a registered nurse at the Duchess of Kent Children's Hospital at Sandy Bay. She took up softball at university and went on to represent Hong Kong at the Asian Universities Women's Softball Championship, where she hit her first home run. She progressed into the Hong Kong senior team, for whom her first major event was the quadrennial Asian Games. Hong Kong's women had made their Asian Games debut at the previous edition in Jakarta without a win; at the 2023 Hangzhou Asian Games, Yuen made her own debut. She recalls that softball is a niche sport in Hong Kong, where local games are mostly watched by family and fans, and that her first Asian Games, with a crowd of over a thousand roaring as Hong Kong won, was an eye-opening experience. Hong Kong's target in Hangzhou was to beat Singapore and Thailand; they lost to Singapore but quickly regrouped and defeated Thailand for Hong Kong's first-ever Asian Games softball victory, finishing seventh overall. In preparation, with training venues long closed during the pandemic, she and her teammates practised their hitting with badminton rackets and worked on fitness at home, and when storms flooded the field just before the Games they still trained in the rain. Seeing strong teams such as Japan and Chinese Taipei up close spurred her to improve. Balancing nursing with training, she sees parallels between the two: hitting, throwing and catching, like bedside care, must be practised until they become muscle memory, and both demand dedication and strict standards. She was encouraged by the support of her colleagues, some of whom shared clips of her games with patients.