Dalat International School: Senior Scribble

The 2026 track tryouts are a 2-day experience which Dalat International School is currently right in the middle of. The track team this year is shaping up to be mostly younger talent with a few archaic track members still sticking around. Those few long to help the new members understand the love of their old track coach, Coach Brooks, who led the team to victory, and triumphed over the Track ACSC of 2025. When asked about the old track team from last year, esteemed track captain Aidan Boyd (12) said, “It was family, led by the patriarch of the track fam, Coach Papa Brooks, who was more than just a coach, more than just a papa, but a mentor, in both my spiritual formation, and my physical development as an athlete–he was a lover, not a fighter, and when we were difficult, he would first love us, then fight us, as a good coach papa would do, which he was, to me, and to the rest of our esteemed ACSC champs, the Dalat Treagles, Treagles meaning Track Eagles.” Aidan continued, “Losing him ...

“Jane, I just really want to win against ISKL,” Tia Emmanuel said as we walked onto the field. The dark sky gloomed over us as the Petronas Twin Towers and KL city lights shone brightly around us.  Since our freshman year, we’ve played the ISKL girls' touch rugby team, and every time we've played them, we've lost. They were the team we always struggled to score against, and the team that constantly scored on us. This game was where we could finally redeem ourselves and continue our climb to win the tournament. The Dalat team had already announced its presence in the tournament with a huge 5-0 win over the Alice Smith School team. Now, all we had left for the day was one more 30-minute-long game of endless sprinting and a big goal to beat ISKL. The referee blew the whistle, and the ISKL girls immediately sprinted towards our team. After a close call where they almost scored on us, we got the ball back, and our middles carried it swiftly up the field. Soon, halftime was calle...

 After a long morning of intense, quick-paced matches, the rugby tournament hosted by UWC Southeast Singapore had left the Varsity Girls Touch Rugby Team with an energy that had nowhere left to settle. The competition, though deceptively demanding, left our bodies fatigued from the soreness of a vastly major triumph in the games that had preceded the evening of rest. As the latter half of the day settled in, the girls and I were accompanied by an unspent alertness—a collective restlessness that refused to dissipate. This anticipation, of course, was due to the team bonding activity that the coaches had revealed would take place after dinner. We entered the laser tag arena knowing precisely where we were and what we had come to do. Still, the moment we equipped our heavy vests, the excitement immediately gave way to tension. The first team consisted of seniors, coaches, and our very own freshman. The second team, a mix of excited sophomores and juniors, was separated from the team o...

Going into the weekend, our girls’ touch rugby team travelled to Johor Bahru for a mini-tournament and felt unstoppable, with 14 wins and 0 losses behind us. It wasn’t something we bragged about, but it sat quietly in our heads every time we stepped onto the field as we trusted each other, knew our strategy, and had grown used to winning. On Saturday, we played Marlborough College in what was meant to be a friendly, but that friendly did not last long. From the first touch, the pace was fast, the competition was real, and we put everything out there; even without heavy contact, every touch mattered, and every mistake was costly. Still, we stayed calm, played our game, and moved the ball smoothly, with our communication staying strong as we walked off with another win. Sunday started early with a drive to Singapore, and we were already feeling it before the first game. Our legs were stiff, and the weekend was starting to catch up with us. Marlborough stood across from us again, and some...

By Jonathan Ooi Splosh! Splat! The senior class gathered around as each person smashed paint onto the tarp. Swirls of color surrounded the class logo, each handprint different from the next.  The seniors, hands plastered with primary colors, reached over one another to make their mark on the large tarp. The Senior Sunrise took place the morning before school started, January 14. Christal Teoh, senior activity coordinator, said that the sunrise was “a good way to begin our last semester at Dalat.” Seniors came together the morning before school to take one last breath before diving headfirst into the last stretch of high school.  That day marked the start of these eighty-five days, the second semester of senior year. These eighty-five days will be the last that we’ll spend as high school students. For some people, they’ll spend the last semester doing the least that they’ve done since the start of their schooling experience (that’s me!). Others need to pay for this last semeste...

There are two types of people in this beautiful world: those who “practice” waking up for school in the morning, and those who hit ”snooze” seven times before rolling out of bed.  For a select minority, the return to school means putting on the long-missed school smile, enjoying the routine of school, and having the ambition to learn: these are the people of most teachers’ dreams. Unfortunately, though, I fall in the majority. The groggy-eyed, sleepy-faced, and disheveled-haired students on the first day of school, missing the cozy comfort of the relaxing break. With Dalat’s second semester starting up again in full force, both types of people will inevitably have to face this reality.  I asked several Dalat students how they were feeling, how they were adjusting to the routine of things and how their break had been. Nathan Evans, Grade 11, seemed to be in quite a good mood for the year to start: “Honestly, I love being back to school. I get to be with my friends all the time,...