Sports no more mere child’s play

Two years ago, Varun’s parents were a worried lot. Their eight-year-old son’s proclivity to spend most of his free time playing games on computer and watching television was alarming. Besides, he had few friends, shied away from group activities in school and looked enervated every time the absence of elevators required him to clamber a flight of steps.

This was before the concept of a school sports company had taken root in the city. Two years on, the picture is patently different. Varun is a bundle of energy, and ever eager to get involved.
Now 10, he looks forward to those physically-exerting sessions at school, working up a sweat, huffing and puffing for 40 minutes thrice a week.

Varun is one of the many students in Bangalore who are reaping the benefits of a professionally-structured sports curriculum in his school. School sports companies such as EduSports, SPT Sports and Tenvic have transfigured the manner in which sports is taught in many private schools in the city.

EduSports, a pioneer in the field, now works with over 30 schools in the city and at least 225 institutes across the country. This means at least 1.6 lakh children are being covered in the country and about 30,000 children in the city. Another such company is SPT Sports which works with at least six schools in the city and another four in the country. Currently, Tenvic, co-founded by Anil Kumble and Vasanth Bharadwaj, caters to over 10 schools across India and in the coming months has plans for tie-ups with some 80 schools across the country, impacting more than 6,500 children.

What’s their role?
What such companies do is provide schools with structured sports syllabi. They treat sports no different than Science or Mathematics. “You do not teach mathematics in school expecting the child to become a mathematician right?” says Saumil Majmudar, co-founder and CEO of EduSport, which was started in 2008.

“Here we nurse no ambition of turning every child into a Sachin Tendulkar or Usain Bolt. Our aim is to make it all-inclusive, ensuring every child gets the right knowledge and attitude to play a sport and be healthy and fit.”

The curriculum is as structured as a Math or Science textbook, with children required to internalise skill sets associated with a number of sports. For example, when a group is taught football, they first learn about the props in the game, its rules, and are then slowly taken through the process part by part, learning passing and receiving, dribbling and kicking.

The syllabi are meticulously prepared right from kindergarten to Standard X and keeping in mind the Indian conditions. Such companies also provide trained teachers, fitness experts and many times also train school staff. “We need to have a clear plan as to what we are going to do with the 35 children in 35 or 40 minutes. At the end of the semester there will be assessment, parent interaction, and a report to management apprising them of the progress so far,” said Majmudar.

SPT Sports has a team which includes two coaches from Spain who design and plan the programmes for each school exclusively. SPT Sports runs specific courses, where international experts are brought in to train local coaches on the latest training methods adopted internationally.

Tenvic aims to put a structure, a system in place where the dependence is on technology. “Currently, we have four sports—cricket, badminton, table tennis and chess—for which we offer coaching at beginner, intermediate and advanced levels. Our software helps capture the child’s posture, movement and technique employed during a game, analyse the captured movements against a how-to-play video manual that has been hosted on a cloud and hence is accessible to every child on our programme,” says Bharadwaj of Tenvic.

Many of the companies also organise tournaments for schools during weekends. SPT Sports conducts regular inter-school tournaments across various age categories at the national level. EduSports has a premier league that is ideally conducted during the weekends for school children. Tenvic conducted multi-sport summer camps across North and South India which had overwhelming turnout.

Besides ensuring the children play in school, they are also taught about nutrition and healthy lifestyle.

“Initially, I thought this will be like any other normal sports period. But after a few classes, I realised there was a difference. In such classes, every child enjoys equal attention. They not only teach sports but also give knowledge about nutrition and hygiene,” says Sukanya, parent of a child studying in one such school with a structured sports programme.
 
Rise and need
Now there are a handful of such professional set-ups in Bangalore.

Kanishka Saran, vice-president of SPT Sports, says the city had been receptive to the idea mainly because of its weather and the profile of residents. “They are young, travelled, having stayed abroad for varied lengths of time and willing to spend on extra-curricular activities. This makes Bangalore very open to this concept,” he adds.

Majmudar said it was a good thing more such companies were coming up. “Given the number of schools and kids if you want to deliver on the goal of a healthy lifestyle, there is so much to do,” he says. According to a survey conducted by EduSports during the academic year 2010-11, at least 61 per cent of school children were found wanting in the requisite skills to engage in sports. At least 43 per cent of the children assessed were found to have unhealthy body composition, while 24 per cent recorded higher than normal BMI scores, meaning they were obese. In the last three years, the programme has helped to register 7-10 per cent improvement in the fitness levels among the kids.  “When we grew up there were enough playing areas outside our homes.

Today, in the urban context, the neighbourhood playgrounds have disappeared, and children don’t have place to play. The only place the child can get some sort of physical activity is the school and therefore the need to run it better. If school sports programme is not run with the same structure, rigour, parent involvement as math or science is run, we will have a generation of unhealthy kids,” says Majmudar.

Bharadwaj of Tenvic said a structured approach to sports is seldom found in schools today. “We felt that technological interventions, innovative and creative methods of instruction and bringing in the right kind of content are absolutely essential. Ad hoc teaching is replaced by a standardised, consistent and quality training,” he says.

A company like Tenvic, however, envisages excellence at the highest level and hence has modules designed for eight to nine years old, and those that go all the way to advanced training.
 
Schools have learnt a lesson
In the last three years, the awareness has increased. “It was tough for us to get through to the school management; now that the results are there to see they have become more accommodative,” says Majmudar. Saran of SPT said initially schools were reluctant to outsource their sports programme as it would affect their hired staff. “Once they understood the structured nature of the programme and the benefits of having sport specific experts and the result-oriented nature of the programme, conversions were faster,” says Saran.

Nirmala Bhonsle, principal of St Dominic’s School, said she had observed a happy change among children.

“They are not realising they are being physically grilled anymore. Also there has been a discernible change in their physique. Earlier, I noticed most of my senior class students were short for their age. Now, they are growing,” she said. Bhonsle said it did not take long for her school to convince the parents for the need for such a professional programme. “We had a PTA session where the advantage of such a programme was placed before the parents. Most of the parents were receptive to the idea even if it meant forking out extra few on the fees,” she says.

Most schools have just two or three physical directors and it’s not always possible for them to be proficient in all sports. Here is where a professionally managed sports company comes in.  
“We have facilities in our school for football, badminton, skating, chess, carrom, among others and to train the children in these sports we have specialised coaches coming in from SPT and other sporting academies. Our own staff then monitors the progress of the children and the performance of the coaches,” says John Abraham, Dean-Academics, Harvest International School. “If we have to hire foreign coaches exclusively for our school it becomes an expensive affair. So instead if we can get them for three days a week, nothing like it.”
 
Parent response
The physiological improvement in children has not escaped the parents’ eye either, who are more than happy to indulge their children. “Earlier, my son was not an active person; he never used to take up anything seriously, be it his studies or eating habits. But after a structured sports programme was introduced in his class, things have been different; I can see that now he has started getting into groups which was not the case earlier,” says a parent of a child studying in Pearson Amara Jyothi Public School, whose curriculum is managed by EduSports.

“Parents have understood the importance of sports in their child’s overall development. With this change in the mind set, schools have naturally adapted to this and in turn have started paying more attention to the right sports programmes in their school curriculum,” says Saran.
 
Caters to all?
Most of them endeavour to cater to all kinds of schools, offering different products for various segments. “We’ve kept in mind the importance of taking this offering to people across all sections of society and have factored this accessibility in our pricing through a range of offerings,” Bharadwaj says.

EduSports works with schools whose fees range from Rs10,000-45,000. “If the school is willing to engage with us, they could take the full programme or a lesser one. Majmudar said efforts were on to engage government schools too, as they were higher in number. “We have programmes designed to meet the constraints of a government school, but are yet to make a breakthrough,” he adds.