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The International School Sports Organisation (ISSO) director, Aakanksha Thapak, emphasised the need to upskill the physical education trainers across schools in India in order to raise the level of sporting performances and offered a glimpse into the country's changing ecosystem over the last decade, which has expanded beyond what happens on the field.
Aakansha was speaking to ANI on Tuesday. ISSO, in collaboration with the International School Federation (ISF) and International Basketball Federation (FIBA), is launching an exclusive PE Educators Upskill Program, led directly by Veselin Matic, India's former national basketball coach, from May 25 to June 2 in Delhi/NCR. By training school physical educators, the aim of this program is to address the core bottleneck of Indian grassroots sports: the lack of internationally aligned coaching frameworks at the school level. Speaking about the programme to ANI, Aakansha said that ISSO has been working for school sports for over a decade, and their new programme revolves around "training the trainers". "ISSO has always worked for the school sports ecosystem, and it has been more than a decade since we started doing this. Now, what we were feeling is that it will not stop here with the tournaments and all of that. It should begin with the PE educators upskilling to international standards so that the athlete can also improve their performance. And that is how talks began with ISF," she said. "ISF also said that they want to come up with their programmes, and this is one of the pilot programmes that ISF have been doing in the last six months. First one we did with Badminton World Federation, that is BWF. And now we are doing it with FIBA. So this tie-up is specially to upskill the PE educators at the school level, so that you know, when the child begins to play, they have the right kind of start for the sport, and they do not miss out on the international level training. It is about training the trainer, which is we believe is at the core of the Indian ecosystem," she added. Often in India, there is a phenomenon of children playing several non-cricketing sports like basketball, football, hockey, tennis, badminton, taekwondo, etc. in their schools with proper facilities, but getting disconnected with it as they move on with their lives. Aakanksha feels that the reason is the competition among Indian families, who want their kids to do well in terms of money and the domination of a single sport, in India's case, cricket. "The problem is too much of competition in the country. So everybody wants, every parent wants their child to do well with finances and do well with what they and every federation is not that big as cricket. So they (parents) know that these opportunities must be stopped at some level because they know it is not going to help them in their careers. But things have changed in the last decade. If you see, there are a lot of government initiatives which have come up, which is giving confidence to parents, you know, that the child can pursue this as a career," she said. She also said that the sporting ecosystem has expanded beyond the field over the last decade and is no longer about just playing. "It is also about the data analytics, psychology and physiology, sports sciences and all of that. If people want to be a part of it, they can because of how things have changed in the last decade. They will continue to change as the effort is so fierce from the government side and the corporates are also supporting a lot, with some good CSR initiatives for some certain sports. The confidence of parents has increased in sports," she added. On her assessment of Indian sporting talent as the director of ISSO, which has been involved in organising school level tournament, Aakansha said that India is doing really well in sports which have a mental aspect to it, but need to work harder in stamina-based sports. "We know that Indian brains are very good brains. So chess, fencing, shooting, all these sports where the mental aspect and capabilities come into play, we are doing well because there is concentration needed. In stamina sports, we really have to work harder. All the racket sports are also getting better, and they are up next. This is what I have understood over the years," she signed off. (ANI)
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