From NSFs discovering camaraderie to fathers creating new family traditions and veterans reflecting on decades of change, generations of Home Team NSmen share how HomeTeamNS has remained a constant companion through every stage of life.
Where did you spend your weekends of freedom during your NS days?
Whether you were a Singapore Police Force (SPF) or Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF) full-time national serviceman (NSF), the answer has remained the same for decades: a HomeTeamNS clubhouse, a hangout spot bustling with activity, and a bunch of NS mates who shared experiences that forged a bond akin to family.
Even with the passage of time, the HomeTeamNS clubhouses at Bukit Batok, Bedok Reservoir, and Khatib remain steadfast presences in the lives of all generations of HomeTeamNS men.
We sat down with members across every stage of life, from NSFs finding their footing and working adults juggling careers and old friendships, to fathers introducing their kids to the space and even veterans who remember when the clubhouse was just a satellite clubhouse.
Time may divide each generation, but their stories intertwine into one enduring tapestry: the HomeTeamNS clubhouse was, and still is, a place for them to call home.
For Ibrahim Bin Mohammed Nurizham Shah, the clubhouse actually predates his own service. His first memory of HomeTeamNS was, in fact, as a boy standing by the windows of the Bukit Batok clubhouse, watching learner drivers loop around the Bukit Batok Driving Centre (BBDC) circuit. At the same time, his father had competed in an inter-unit bowling tournament.
“As a child, HomeTeamNS was simply a place where I spent time with my family,” he recalls. “Years later, after serving my own National Service, I came to appreciate what the clubhouse truly represents.”
Starting as the son of an NSman, Ibrahim now closes the loop by returning to HomeTeamNS as an SPF NSman himself. Aside from attending NSmen Cohesion bowling sessions that turn into an hour of unplanned reminiscing, he also hits the ground running through HomeTeamNS REAL® Run, where he catches up with squadmates that he now mostly keeps up with online.
Even the small things count. “It means we don’t have to go out of our way to plan a meetup,” he said of the Khatib clubhouse’s mix of study spaces, bouldering walls at Adventure HQ, and bowling lanes. “HomeTeamNS already has everything in one place.”
The instinct to hang out with family and friends at the HomeTeamNS clubhouse is all too familiar for Muhammad Zidny Ilman. His earliest memories at the clubhouse were of weekend swims at the Bukit Batok clubhouse with his father and siblings, birthday celebrations, and Laser Quest games with aunts and uncles thrown in for good measure.
Grown up, that familiarity became second nature: when he had time on his hands, HomeTeamNS became the default.
“Upon reflection now, I’d suggest HomeTeamNS-adjacent activities without even thinking about it,” he remarked, recalling nights spent glued to live football tournament screenings at 3 am with his buddies. “There’s just something about feeling the energy of the crowd and sharing that moment together.”
It is this perception of HomeTeamNS as a second home that has led to Zidny organising annual family gatherings at West Villa. The Khatib clubhouse was also where his sister got married, and will also serve as the venue for his own wedding next year.
What started as a place to hang out with his squad has, without him quite noticing, become the backdrop to his entire adult life.
Between bowling scores and football screenings, one thing becomes clear: for young NSmen, HomeTeamNS’s clubhouses made spontaneity easy, places where “nothing to do” transforms into core memories.
As careers take off, the spontaneity of your younger years wears off, but HomeTeamNS continues to remain a constant. For Tan Jun Wei, that connection has endured for more than a decade. Jun Wei has been a member since 2009, back when his visits were mostly to West Villa at HomeTeamNS Bukit Batok.
Today, volunteering as a HomeTeamNS Bedok Reservoir Executive Committee member, Jun Wei has a relationship with the clubhouse that has deepened into something closer to ownership. The simple pleasures, however, still remain—a weekly swim with his mother and sister, the occasional solo gym session for ‘me-time,’ and old NS bonds kept alive not through effort, but through fixtures like Guardians Playoff and REAL® Run already built into the calendar.
Having experienced HomeTeamNS through different stages of life, Jun Wei also sees opportunities for it to evolve alongside its members. Looking ahead, he would like to see HomeTeamNS lean further into his current stage of life, whether it be through courses or networking sessions that enable career-driven members to grow alongside their community.
Yet, what Jun Wei values most remains the sense of familiarity and belonging it provides. “Having a familiar place to spend family time and catch up with fellow NSmen allows me to be at ease. The experience is made as comfortable as it can be for me, my family, and friends. We do not have to overthink or plan for catchups and can use that time instead to spend quality time together,” he says. To Jun Wei, HomeTeamNS has grown beyond being physical clubhouses. Instead, it has become a destination where family, friendships, and the Home Team community can come home together to relax, connect, and create memories that last.
Cyril Lim’s journey shows just how far that same growth can go. Like most other NSFs, he started by using the facilities and staying loosely connected. His continued support later led to his involvement in HomeTeamNS volunteer roles with various committees, most recently as Co-Chair of the Development Committee for the upcoming Tengah clubhouse.
Despite keeping a tight calendar as a Deputy Director in a food and beverage company and the NS Deputy Commander of Jurong Division, Cyril finds solace in HomeTeamNS, which remains the one space where he both leads and unwinds. “HomeTeamNS makes it easy because the infrastructure—facilities, events, and programmes—are already there. NSFs, NSmen, and their family and friends do not have to plan anything. They just show up. That’s why events like Guardians Playoff, REAL® Run, Family Day, and football screenings work. They give everyone a reason and a place to come back together,” he shares.
Whether he’s organising Guardians Playoff for the Division or planning REAL® Run for HomeTeamNS each year, Cyril sees himself as a bridge “from participant, to organiser, to advocate.”
For him, belonging is simple to spot. “It’s when another NSman comes up after an event and says, ‘See you at the next one.’ That one sentence tells me they feel at home here. As someone who leads and helps guide other NSmen, my job is to create those moments where people feel welcome, included, and part of something bigger than themselves.”
What Jun Wei and Cyril both point to is a quiet shift in what HomeTeamNS means once work and adulthood take over: less an ordinary venue that you visit, and more a community that you build and carry forward.
Somewhere along the way, the friends who once filled HomeTeamNS’s clubhouses start bringing someone new: their children. For Su Caizheng, a volunteer with the Strategic Review and Tengah Development Committees at HomeTeamNS, this shift has completely changed his perception of the space.
“It made me realise how the organisation had grown alongside us,” Caizheng reminisced. “Years ago, I would visit with my bunkmates after training. Today, I am walking through the same doors holding my children’s hands. To me, that is one of HomeTeamNS’s greatest strengths. It has evolved beyond being a clubhouse for NSmen to becoming a destination that caters to every season of an NSman’s life. I still visit the clubhouses with both my current and former unit members for gatherings and activities, but I can also bring my family and know that everyone will have something they enjoy.” His kids even have their own name for T-Play Khatib by HomeTeamNS—”Daddy’s playground”—a reflection of the fond memories the family has built there together.
His volunteer work has only deepened that appreciation. Through his involvement in various transformation initiatives, Caizheng has gained a firsthand view of the effort behind the member experience. “One of the most rewarding aspects has been seeing firsthand the effort, passion, and commitment that HomeTeamNS invests in continually enhancing its facilities and programmes for members. Being involved in various transformation initiatives has given me a unique perspective on the amount of planning, collaboration, and dedication that goes into creating best-in-class experiences for our Home Team community and their families,” he shares.
Between weekend meals at Saizeriya, football screenings with the whole family in tow, and birthdays celebrated at the clubhouse year after year, HomeTeamNS has folded itself into his family’s routine so naturally that he barely notices the shift anymore. Community has extended far beyond the squad he once served with, now including his wife, his children, and the wider Home Team family who show up alongside them. “As a parent, my greatest hope is that my children will one day see HomeTeamNS not just as a place they visited with their parents, but as a community they feel connected to in their own right. Perhaps one day they will bring their own friends, serve as volunteers, or even bring their own families back to the clubhouses, just as I have,” he reflects.
Caizheng’s experience as a family man is echoed by Azim Rahmat, whose family built a routine of their own around HomeTeamNS. Once or twice a month, Azim would bring his family to HomeTeamNS Bedok Reservoir for a three-hour swim. “My daughters wake up excited, screaming in happiness because they know they’re going swimming,” Azim fondly quipped.
These tranquil days as a father are a world away from the Bukit Batok clubhouse bowling sessions of Azim’s NSF days, and yet the throughline is unmistakable. “It felt like I was passing down a part of my identity to them,” he reflected on the first time he brought his eldest daughter to the clubhouse. His girls know their father was once a young national serviceman here, and they light up hearing stories of his younger days bowling with his kakis. Azim’s wife also shares the family’s HomeTeamNS moments on social media, proudly telling her friends about how family-friendly the clubhouses have become over the years.
Guardians Playoff now doubles as an extended-family outing, with cousins and relatives gathering at T-Play, while Azim is engaged in the competitive games with his fellow NSmen. “It becomes a bonding session, cousins playing together, adults catching up, and everyone enjoying the space. HomeTeamNS events and facilities make it easy to create these moments. The convenience, the activities, and the exclusivity all encourage us to keep coming back.”
These days, Azim sees HomeTeamNS through a different lens: as a place where his daughters are building core memories of their own. “They call the place beautiful, and they’re brave here and not afraid of the water. Watching them grow, learning to swim, and conquer fears in the same environment where I once relaxed after NS duties feels fantastic.”
For Azim, that ability to remain meaningful through every stage of life is what makes HomeTeamNS special. As he aptly puts it, “HomeTeamNS embodies a broader sense of belonging, one that supports every version of who I am.”
The clubhouse that once hosted post-training hangouts is now where parents forge precious memories with their children, proving that the same walls can hold multiple generations of stories at once.
For members further along the journey, HomeTeamNS has become less about reliving the past and more about discovering what’s still ahead. Edwin Ang who is part of the Auto Adventure club at HomeTeamNS has been a regular participant of REAL® Run for years, tracing scenic routes through Sentosa and Coney Island before eventually volunteering with the Auto Adventure Club.
These days, his rhythm looks different: badminton with his buddies every Tuesday and Thursday evening, weekend meals with his wife at the clubhouse F&B outlets, and a genuine excitement about Khatib’s newly opened pickleball courts.
Edwin has also noticed something else. When he shares stories about HomeTeamNS with old friends from other clubs, he noted that they were pleasantly surprised by just how much support is extended to national servicemen here. For him, that evolution is precisely what has kept HomeTeamNS relevant through the years. “HomeTeamNS has indeed come a long way by evolving to stay relevant and providing members with many options to spend quality time with their families, fellow NSmen, and friends. The state-of-the-art clubhouses at Khatib and Bedok Reservoir, as well as the upcoming Tengah clubhouse, each with its own unique identity, are testaments to HomeTeamNS’s continued focus on enriching the NS journey. Beyond the facilities, members can also take part in carnivals, fairs, and sporting events, all while enjoying merchant tie-ups such as movie and petrol discounts. Life beyond office hours does indeed start with HomeTeamNS!” he quips.
Looking forward to the eventual opening of the RTS Link at the end of 2026, Edwin hopes HomeTeamNS will organise trips to help members relive the old kampung days in Johor Bahru, including durian farms and fireflies at night; in essence, he wants to recapture the kind of idyllic, unhurried adventures that shaped the Singapore of yesteryear with the HomeTeamNS community.
Few members can speak to this arc quite like Cheah Kok Keong, a volunteer with the HomeTeamNS Guardians Committee, who has been part of the community since the early 1990s. These were the early days, before HomeTeamNS came into being, when SPANS and CDANS served SPF and SCDF national servicemen respectively before merging to form HomeTeamNS in 2005.
The merger itself was a milestone, though not without its challenges. “It wasn’t easy at first. It was like mixing oil and water,” Kok Keong recalled. “As a volunteer, it took effort behind the scenes to bridge gaps, mix committees, and organise events that brought everyone together. But over time, we became one strong family.” Kok Keong also remembers the first “auto adventure” road trips to Malaysia, where 30 cars were coordinated with no GPS and no mobile phones, and the pride of finally having a purpose-built clubhouse to call their own.
Looking back, Kok Keong believes HomeTeamNS has always been about more than facilities and programmes. “HomeTeamNS provides the physical spaces and social network for National Servicemen from the SPF and SCDF and their families,” he said. “It brings together NSmen from diverse social backgrounds, different experiences and ranks to bond. Everyone can enjoy the facilities with their friends and families.”
Today, Kok Keong sees HomeTeamNS as an organisation that has successfully evolved alongside its members. “While the locations, sizes of facilities, programmes and activities have changed over the years, what has stayed constant is the successive groups of younger NSmen who continue this spirit of camaraderie and make HomeTeamNS even better and more relevant,” he shared. As a veteran volunteer, he is encouraged to see a new generation shaping the community in their own way. “We should give them space to evolve too. After all, they have their own interpretation of what is good for their cohort.”
Kok Keong’s hope for the future is simple: a small corner in each clubhouse honouring HomeTeamNS’s roots, serving as a reminder for all succeeding generations of NSmen to remember what it took to build the home they’ve inherited.
This is the underlying current across every chapter, every stage, and every clubhouse HomeTeamNS has built. The facilities and membership demographics may have changed, but the reason people keep coming back hasn’t moved an inch.
HomeTeamNS continues to be a constant beacon of support for all servicemen past, present, and future. Beyond their service ranks, HomeTeamNS recognises them as friends, husbands, fathers, and, eventually, the old-timers who pass the torch to succeeding generations.
Looking ahead, HomeTeamNS will open the doors to its newest clubhouse in Tengah. Yet even as it grows and evolves, HomeTeamNS remains committed to its enduring purpose: to be an advocate for members, adapting to and supporting every chapter of their lives, ensuring that generations of NSmen will always have a place to come home to HomeTeamNS.
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