SINCE the beginning of this year, we have been hearing a lot of what is being done to encourage more young people to participate in sports activities. This is simply because of the coming CJSOI games in July this year. Much effort is being made to encourage schools to have their own teams such as athletic teams so that athletes are better prepared for competition and hopefully give better performances.
What is beyond comprehension is that this was the case ten to fifteen years ago. The sports calendar for school children was full and every term there were league competitions inter schools and by the time these young men and women were old enough they could be absorbed in the district teams and into the national teams. For a while now apart from the football federation investing a lot in the young children no other associations or federations have done so. As a result when there are international competitions for the youth we have a hard time looking around for suitable participants.
We never seem to learn our lesson, year in year out we are face with the same old problems. If we want quality sportsmen for the future we should be investing in the youths with potentials and keep track of their development. Physical Education in a lot of schools is not what it used to be, meaning that children today learn very little compared to some years ago when all the basics in sports such as volleyball, basketball, football and netball were thought even in primary schools. Sporting activities should be an integral part of the curriculum for each and every school in the country. In fact we should be a step ahead of other countries in the region, but we are not. We need to be taking temporary measures placing emphasis on team sports to start with and bringing back a regular inter school league.
It is now up to the respective federations to invest in the youth for the sports they want to promote because if they rely on the schools or the young to simply take it on their own sooner or later they will be left with veterans in their teams like it was the case for hockey in recent years.
The youth did not receive adequate training on how to plat the game and there was no national league for a while. Basketball has also suffered in the past few years, especially on the female side.
If we look at most of those teams today they are made of ladies over 25 years old. We saw what happened to boxing after the likes of Roland Raforme, Rival Payet formerly Cadeau and Jerry Legras retired. It is now that boxing is slowly picking up and gaining its popularity back.
“We have an Indian Ocean Games on home soil in a few years so let us start investing more in our young and cultivate in them a sense of good discipline and sportsmanship.”