CHENNAI: Tiny legs kicking the ball across the field, passing it on to their teammates and ensuring they get through the little goalkeeper on the other side of the field — well, what’s not adorable about that?! LeapStart, a Bengaluru-based sport and physical education organisation which has its programmes spread across 40 cities in the country is in the city with its second edition of the LeapStart Junior Football League, which will be held across eight cities, starting from Chennai.
“Our first tournament was conducted only in Bengaluru where we had 23 teams participating in a tournament that went on for seven weeks. And this year, we wanted to expand it further and will be conducting it across eight cites (Chennai, Punjab, Bengaluru,Delhi, Pune, Hyderabad, Mumbai and Goa),” says Kartik Shetty, head of events and strategic partnership, Leapstart.
Having tied up 220 schools across 40 cities, LeapStart has helped these schools inculcate its curriculum in physical training. They have their own trainers and equipment as well. The tournament will begin in Chennai over the weekend will see 160 children from five different schools (that LeapStart is associated with) competing in 16 teams. The teams are divided as U-8, U-10 and U-12 and have both a girls as well as a boys’ team.
“LeapStart began in 2010, for a sole reason to provide quality physical education to children as young as eight. Not many schools today have a proper PE system. Kids are not taught to play a sport; they are just given a ball and asked to play. We wanted to bridge that gap and train kids from a young age to play competitive sports,” Kartik highlights.
Children playing these matches undergo training and practice sessions on weekdays and the matches happen during the weekends. “They practice for over two hours every day and have been training for the last one-and-a-half months,” remarks Balaji Ashokan, regional manager, TN, Leapstart.
Although the rules and regulations remain the same as any other football tournament, the number of players and the pitch size will be different, keeping in mind the age of the players. In a regular match, 11 players will be seen covering around seven to eight kilometres of the field, but for the tiny ones, the pitch size has been reduced so that the ball doesn’t go over their heads and instead they can run along with the ball and pass and kick as well. The 16 different teams will include six players on the field and four substitute players. There will be 12 matches played in total, with one every weekend.
Talking about the training sessions given to the children, Coach Thiyagu Paramasivam says that it was indeed a difficult task to train them. “Initially, it was quite tough to make them understand the rules and regulations of playing a match. So we used to train them with the ball all the time; even their warm ups were done with the ball in the hand. Eventually, step by step, they learnt it all and became ready for the tournament. We started with boys only first and then pushed the girls to play later on. In fact they are playing much better than the boys,” he smiles
Match details
LeapStart Junior Football League will begin in Chennai on November 11.
The first match will be played at MIRS - Maharishi Vidya Mandir International School, Sunguvarchatiram, from 9 am onwards. For details call: 9620160484