By Rohit Brijnath

Don't make a mistake. Don't look at these 14-year-olds, fighting pimples, braces glinting with every shy crooked smile, and think, oh, they're just kids. They're also athletes, they're at the AYG not just to make friends and play generous host. They're also here to compete.

Sport, once played in the sandpit, is still fun but with an edge. Or as Singapore's bowling coach Mervin Foo says: 'Having fun is when you win.'

Don't tiptoe around this nation's youngsters. By the time you sip your morning tea, they've done miles in the water and befriended pain. They are not professional athletes, this isn't their livelihood, but neither is this some community, do-it-for-charity carnival.

The AYG are perfect for teens, a professional Games in amateur miniature. It is that scary, thrilling moment of transition when neighbourhood hot-shot becomes unknown competitor trying to take on his continent.

Says chef de mission Lee Wung Yew: 'It's good to expose these kids to a minor form of a major Games.' The word Games is key: if we want a hand-holding cultural exchange, we should hold a youth camp; if you call it a Games it means competition with something at stake.

Proportion is required here. No one wants ranting fathers courtside or overbearing coaches. But competing hard is a thrill, it's rewarding, it's revealing, it brings out, says Foo, 'an inner fortitude'.

It's what kids train for, it's what coaches like swimming's David Lim will be looking for. Some kids have a natural affinity for the contest; others, he says, 'train well but don't compete well'. Not every contestant will pursue a life in sport, but some will crave excellence and we shouldn't snuff it out.

Not giving these athletes medals, as was contemplated, would have been counter-productive. You can't produce adult champions if the first lesson you're handing out to kids is that winning doesn't matter. Says football coach David Sivalingam: 'We're trying to get into the top four and there are very good teams here. You must have a winning mentality.'

Pressure has become another swear word, uttered usually by officials who want to cotton-wool athletes. But all athletes wear pressure, even amateurs on weekends when hunched over a four-foot putt, and it's part of the pleasure of sport.

When Maria Sharapova got to the 2008 Australian Open final, tennis legend Billie Jean King sent her a text that read 'pressure is a privilege'. As if to say, to be in that position to feel pressure means you're privileged.

The AYG teens are some distance from Sharapova's world, but they're representing their nations in a regional tussle that has its own tensions. It is to be dealt with, not shied from.

No Singapore coach I met boastfully predicted medal numbers. Hype they don't care for, but a little pressure they're fine with. 'We welcome it,' said sailing's Mark Plummer. Foo even prepared his team for it, simulating conditions in practice and making his bowlers compete against superior players.

Coaches see the AYG as an experience, a testing ground, even a dress rehearsal for next year's Youth Olympic Games.

So Sivalingam is looking for 'discipline and commitment'. Plummer will keep an eye on how his sailors react to media coverage and life at a big Games. Lim says his swimmers usually swim away from these shores, yet this home meet will provide 'a good learning curve for there will will be a bit more pressure'.

But no experience is worthwhile, no learning achieved, unless the activity is conducted with a certain intensity.

No one wants grim, scowling robots at 14. No one wants a teenager to confuse losing with failure. No one wants to define them at 14, for as Xu Xiangdong, table tennis' youth coach, says: 'You can't be too judgmental at this early stage because their bodies are still growing and their games are still improving.'

But surely no one, especially paying spectators, wants to see a hit and giggle Games. Indeed, to want anything less than hard, fair contests would be to disrespect Singapore's tough teens. As two bowlers sternly replied, when asked if their mission was limited to fun: 'We play to win.'

This article was first published in The Straits Times.