India’s rural children find sport fields become platforms to break social barriers
It was a golden era, when India attained recognition for sport, thanks to the wizardry of one man, with just a stick on the hockey pitch, Major Dhyanchand. His 111th birth anniversary celebrated on the 29th of August throughout India as National Sports Day served as an apt backdrop for ASA to host the first of its kind multi-sport exchange fest for ASV athletes.
The festivity was planned to involve every member of the ASV family. As many as 283 athletes, 24 coaches and teaching staff, 10 volunteers and around 50 ASV ground and resident academy support staff participated in this event. Not to mention another 30 of Rural Development Trust’s (RDT) visitors and on-looking parents of the Nadal Education and Tennis School’s children cheering from the side-lines.
As many as 16 stations were setup throughout the ASV campus involving 24 groups of the ASV athletes in ASA’s core sports: football, cricket, tennis, and hockey. The athletes were presented the opportunity to learn skills of the sport they had seldom played. The country’s National Sports Day got effective meaning as the children actively participated and seemed very happy and eager to learn other games, away from their usual routine.
Elder boys and girls took the lead to step in and teach the younger ones the skills of their own sport, the little ones also making similar efforts. Thus encompassing them all in a very jolly atmosphere. The children were glad to interact and share their knowledge with others. They socialised with each other, particularly girls with boys, with ease, a rather uncommon occurrence for these rural children due to their conservative and restrictive backgrounds.
The evening involved fun games like, ‘dog and the bone’, ‘fetch the parcel’, non-contact Australian Rules football, foot volleyball, throwball, ‘pull the tags’, and some basic sports skills, like forehand and backhand from tennis, shooting from football, dribbling from hockey along with an introduction to tennis presentation. Sport became a language of the senses and the playfields became platforms to break social barriers
The evening closed with a judo demonstration at ASA’s RDT Judo Federation of India, training centre. ASA’s 25 judokas performed some of their throws, rolls and falls but later captivated their audience with an acrobatics and human pyramids encore.
RDT’s sports director, M. Nirmal Kumar, summed up the evening, with praises for the legend, Major Dhyanchand and addressed the children saying: “We noticed you all bonded with other athletes, talking and interacting with them like never before. Your smiles and chatter was like the chirping free birds. We hope you had a great time and look forward to hosting more events like these for you”
[This article has been edited by the Operating Team]
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