What Next?

02/05/2009

What next

Schools in Puducherry are almost a month into their summer vacation. The heat wave has forced the school authorities in Delhi to go in for advancing summer vacation. It is almost summer vacation time in Kolkata

So, as the schools closed, we open our eyes to the tasks that lies ahead.

Othl program is almost four months old. We aim to start it in four metros. Though Puducherry is in Phase I, Kolkata progress is staggering, it appears. So far we have received subscription for three schools. If two more joins, which I am sure they will, we will open our scheme in Kolkata. But will we do before the rainy season starts is matter of conjecture.

I feel we lost some valuable time with respect to Kolkata because once the rain starts there, no hockey can be played.

Frankly speaking, our aim is 1000 legs, we are somewhere trotting at 250. Which means, we are yet to climb three third of our modest target. Now therefore we have to look at the things qualitatively and quantitatively so that we can make progress keeping the prospects in mind.

Once the schools open, how are we going to engage the schools, our coaches and children?

Primarily, we have three areas to focus.

Foremost is Hockey Awareness thing. Provide enough literature to kids for the first three weeks after schools start, and conduct at least one quiz in each of our schools so that we can think of a combined or inter-school hockey quiz at the end of, say, 3 or 4 months.

I expect a lot from volunteer Somesh. He is tasked to make as many quiz modules as he can visualize. The one he prepared for the summer camp came in for commendation from many. My simple advice, if at all he needs one is, to prepare content keeping only last and this years’ hockey scene in mind. This can in a long run inspire children paper reading.

Secondly, schools need to visit another school, engage in competitions in the full glare of another school's crowd. That is, inter-school competition has to start in the second month of the new academic year. Here, the volunteers need to work out a workable competition scheme and schedule. It is going to be a hell of a job, as all schools have to take interest and then agree to a common time table.

Third is, how to improve training skills of our coaches? This is important in Puducherry at least as some visitors found the quality of training needs improvement. Yes, we in principle agreed to this.

We can always organize coaching for our coaches, but to run a meaningful program for a considerable duration, we need more number of trainees. Now we have hardly three or four of them. It is therefore going to be challenging. The task of getting around a decent figure of 10, that is, ten coaching aspirants, who will be willing to learn and then impart to their wards.

So, its vacation time for children. If we think and plan right now utilizing the field-lull phase, we can roll our scheme better in the coming months.

What is to be borne in mind is, first six months of new academic session is ideal period for us to put in place on field whatever we dream of. .

It remains to be seen how much we realize our dream in the coming season.