For India to successfully compete at international level, it needs a well thought-out 5 and 10-years long-term sports development plan where the concentration and emphasis must be predominately on the sub-juniors and juniors. For the national teams to excel at international tournaments/championships, our sub-juniors/juniors’ teams must first compete and be successful at the international level.
The western world has a special “Development Academy” in all sports to nurture and train juniors to compete on the world stage. This forms an important pipeline to the national team. Case in point, Spain won the U17, U20 FIFA Women World Cup in 2022 and many from the winning junior teams were on the current Spain’s national team which won FIFA Women World Cup 2023. Most of these players also play in foreign leagues and universities, where their football acumen is sharpened. These accomplishments do not happen by chance, but through many years of deliberate and systematic planning. Importantly, these academies are run by the nation’s brightest of minds in sports (administrators, and coaching teams). Even global experts are hired to provide effective and productive leadership.
With all the complexities that exist in India, programmes/schemes designed to promote success in sports provides its own challenges. These programmes/schemes must be feasible and adapted to Indian conditions, otherwise, they cannot deliver values and the desired results.
A curriculum must be designed based on tactical and technical training/coaching for team and individual sports based on western nations’ philosophy and principles but adapted for Indian culture and conditions. The same curriculum must be taught across Goa and India starting with schools/colleges. The cumulative finale must end up with organised in-house tournaments and even taking these teams abroad to participate. Additionally, the coaches/instructors must also be professionally trained to execute the curriculum.
EDUCATIONAL COMPONENT
The sport development plan of India/Goa must also include a strong educational component if we want to win the support of the parents. We have already established that parents want their kids to do well in school and end up with a professional career with gainful employment. Parents will be motivated to send their children to participate in these sports camps if they see the educational value added along with health and wellness.
We need support from parents to succeed in this programme. To this end, I am proposing an innovative initiative that I started at The University of Akron and surrounding schools in Akron, Ohio, that received great reviews from the parents, coaches, and communities’ leaders.
Using sports (select any sport) as an instructional modality, we introduced the students (Middle School) to Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education and careers in these domains through sports. Sport of basketball coaching camp was used to expose 145 kids to the science behind the game.
Deliberate hand-on exercises (paper/pen and worksheets) were designed to motivate kids into STEM subject areas. Besides learning the fundamental sports specific motor skills of the game, they also learned about sports science using subjects such as science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.
The data indicated that kids had fun learning motor skills and most importantly they learned about sport science and STEM careers in sports and health professions. This was an eye opener for parents to experience how STEM subjects were incorporated into the sport camp for the kids to learn what possible careers are available and what are the academic prerequisites to get admission into these science programmes. Thus, motivating the students to do well in academics to progress into their professional careers.
It will have the same impact on the Goan and Indian parents if we adopt the educational component to the sports camps. It has a tremendous impact and educational value for the students, which is otherwise limited in its scope in the current form of education.
AMAZING INDIA, GOA
Like the western world, India has the resources to be empowered to be competitive in international sports. India has already achieved these feet particularly in outsourcing of services and information technology. But in sports, we have lot of work ahead of us to accomplish and successfully compete with the western nations. We need the Indian sport’s intellectual capacity along with global integration of sports expertise from high performing nations to forge India into the international world of sports.
We do hold our own in the Asian Championships but when it comes to international competitions it is a different story. India must adopt a business model in sports that must bring about meaningful changes with innovative schemes at grass-root levels of administration, coaching, and scientific training to achieve success at international level.
The writer presently based in Ohio-US has won awards in multiple sports in his youth and served in Higher Education as faculty member, administrator, and innovator in sports in the US for 32 years
