Scrabble Championship: Moiz to spell out win for Pakistan team

19-year-old hired as coach to prepare 15 players for second WYSC title

KARACHI: For the World Youth Scrabble Champion (WYSC) 2013 Moizullah Baig, the stakes are high, as the 19-year-old plans to prepare a team that can bring the second WYSC title to Pakistan this year.

Moiz proved his mettle at the 2013 WYSC, where he became the first Pakistani to win the international scrabble circuit.

Three years later — an expert in his field — he is now the first professional coach hired by the Pakistan Scrabble Association (PSA) to train a team for the competition in Lille, France in August this year.

Moiz has nearly two months to coach the 15 players who are participating in international competition.



“It’s a huge responsibility of course, but I feel we can do it again,” Moiz told The Express Tribune after concluding his first session as the national team’s coach. “We talked about ethics first. I told them that they should carry themselves respectfully and that people will forget how many games one wins, but they will never forget good behavior.”

However, he focused on other things too. “I also emphasised on the order of play, temperament and that they should forget previous losses and focus on the game at hand. I know these players and they respond well.”

Moiz said that countries like Sri Lanka and Singapore will be tough competitors at the event as they’ve improved drastically, although Pakistani players are expected to win.



PSA Director Youth Program Tariq Pervez said that it is better to have a coach as young as Moiz because teenagers respond well to someone who is closer to their age. “Moiz is updated with modern techniques of learning new words, which include using softwares and other technologies that the older generation does not understand,” said Pervez. “He will get a bonus if we get even one world champion in any of the age categories at the WYSC this year.”

Published in The Express Tribune, June 27^th, 2016.

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