Hong Kong Sports Development Board Head Tennis Coach, Stan Tamura, captured his second successive Coach of the Year Award as a total of 63 coaches were honoured at the prestigious annual Hongkong Bank Foundation Coaching Awards Presentation held at Grand Hyatt last Sunday.

The Coach of the Year Awards are given to coaches who are considered to have best demonstrated the ability to improve the performance of a team or an individual at the international level.

The selection criterion is based on the coaches' overall performance in terms of consistency of performance, initiative in developing new athletes, improvement of athletes' attitude, and cooperation among squad members.

Tamura won the 2002 award by virtue of the outstanding results achieved by Yu Hiu Tung and Brian Hung. The two full-time scholarship athletes performed extremely well in a number of ITF World Junior Circuit events, including winning the boys' doubles at the Group 2 Eravis Epitok Cup in Hungary last June.

Organised by the Hong Kong Coaching Committee (HKCC) and sponsored by The Hongkong Bank Foundation, the Awards, a major component of the Coach Education Programme, is the only scheme recognising the contributions of coaches on a territory-wide basis.

Recipients were selected by the HKCC Awards Sub-committee, which comprises Dr. Leung Mee-Lee, John Fan, Silas Chiang and Dr. Chung Pak-Kwong.

The HKCC is a joint committee of the Sport Federation and Olympic Committee of Hong Kong, China and the Hong Kong Sports Development Board. Set up in 1991, its aim is to build an infrastructure shaping the development of coach education in Hong Kong.

Last year, Tamura captured the Coaching Excellence Award 2001 and Coach of the Year Award (senior athletes, team event) 2001.