Now that the CSJOI games are over, people working with youths in different sports should be questioning the way that their respective sports are developing among the young people.
The games showed that when it comes to teams sports we are seriously lacking in some areas. For a long time, the female basketball players have been complaining that the sport is not progressing and is in fact regressing. We were able to see for ourselves the reason for that.
Our young girls are not being trained or encouraged to take up the sports when the veterans retire. The heavy defeats we suffered at the hands of our Indian Ocean counterparts, shows that while other countries are progressing we are not.
The same is the case for our football team. A small country like Mayotte has overtaken us in that department. Thanks to our girls in the volleyball team and the players of badminton we managed to show that we at least have made some progress in those two areas.
For volleyball it is clear, that the senior female players are mostly responsible for motivating their girls. Take Marielle Bonne for example, she must have been going to the volleyball court at a young age with her mum hence her excellent ability at this age. It was the same with the daughters of Marie-Ange.
But what are the federations themselves doing to encourage other youngsters in those events? Team sports are left to the mercy of the P.E. teachers but not all of them are well versed in those disciplines and the young may be missing out on the basic skills.
We have said before that the Football Federation had put in place the school of excellence to encourage young football players. Although this has been a good initiative, keeping the young footballers on the programme proves to be a problem. Adolescents are not known for being consistent so ways have to be found to keep them interested.
Basketball - when Brother Smith was here – he started working with our young players but as he said several times, the people in charged should be more committed towards that end otherwise what he was doing was simply an exercise in futility. Well we have now seen what he was talking about.
Adults Rugby players are now going to the schools to encourage younger players to take up the sports. So far this is not the case for volleyball or basketball. We need to establish junior teams wherever possible so that we will have somewhere to recruit players from to replace older players leaving the sports.
The investment has been made in young people to encourage them especially those that have been identified with particular skills at a very young age. If we watch other countries, we can see that development of children in different areas start at a very young age so that by the time they reach adolescent they already have all the basic skills and can now develop further their individual techniques.
Let us hope that we have learned our lesson and this sorry state of affairs will not remain until 2011. The trend that has been set for many years now is that we only train for major competition. At other times nobody bothers about what is going on in sports unless we are hosting a big event. So it is time to start being proactive and now is the time to start preparing our younger sportsmen and women so that we will be able to challenge the others in the region. If Mayotte has done it why can’t we.
We have always said that our nation is intelligent and capable, quit the talking, and let us show that we really are.