The Don Bosco School in Kawant (Vadodara district) has become the first school from Gujarat to make it to the super league stage of the under-14 Subroto Cup national football tournament.
An educational institution functioning in a tribal area of Gujarat has created sporting history for the state. The Don Bosco School in Kawant (Vadodara district) has become the first school from Gujarat to make it to the super league stage of the under-14 Subroto Cup national football tournament.
The national football tourney, which concluded recently, was held at New Delhi this year. Incidentally, all members of the Don Bosco football team are from the Rathwa tribal community.
The Kawant boys earned a place in the super league when they won four of the nine matches they played in the preliminary round of the tournament. All their matches were played at Air Force school ground in New Delhi.
The Don Bosco team outplayed Delhi’s Air Force (Balbharti) School 3-0, a school from Madhya Pradesh 6-1, and a school team from Sri Lanka. However, it lost to school teams from Meghalaya, Sikkim and Uttarkhand. Forty-four teams participated in the tournament out of which only 28 proceeded to the super league.
In the preliminary round, Don Bosco finished fourth, and this guaranteed them a place in top 30. Captain Jayesh, Jignesh Jamsingh, and Vijay were the star players of the team.
In the super league matches, too, the Kawant boys fought hard to retain their position.
However, they had to bow out of the tournament when they were defeated by teams from Nagaland, Chandigarh and the Sports Authority of India (SAI).
However, Don Bosco’s school in-charge, Brother Ramesh, is not at all disappointed by the performance of his boys. He said he was, in fact, so touched by the boys’ performance that he couldn’t hold back his tears when they lost in the super league round.
“It was a memorable tournament,” he said. “Don Bosco Matunga (Mumbai) were also playing but couldn’t qualify for the super league. But we did, mainly because of the team spirit shown by our boys.” He said the Kawant boys were unlucky not to repeat their success in the super league matches. “Yet their game gave me great satisfaction,” said Brother Ramesh.
“Incidentally, all members of the team belong to the Rathwa tribal community. This clearly shows that there is no dearth of talent in Gujarat’s rural areas. It just needs to be identified and nourished.”
Brother Ramesh is all praise for Chandrashekhar Solanki, the Sports Authority of Gujarat coach who trained the boys for the national tournament, and a Mumbai-based football coach, Lesse Pereira. “They deserve all the credit for training the boys so well,” he said.
Talking about the performance of the Don Bosco team, Solanki said schools from the state had made it to the national event earlier, too, but none had been able to get past the preliminary round. “The Kawant boys are the first from the state to make it to the super league,” he said. “This is a historic achievement.”
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