CHENNAI: For Yogendra Shekhawat, a shooting coach based in Delhi, the last decade has been spent honing the skills of young shooters striving to make it big. He has been the head coach at Topgun Shooting Academy - where youngsters with international honours like Paarth Makhija and Visnu Shivraj Pandian train - for the past seven years and was able to make ends meet with his job at the range.
But the Covid-19 pandemic, seeing a virulent second wave in India, has resulted in severe ramifications for the 29-year-old. His monthly salary is down from Rs 30000 to Rs 5000 per month. If the situation doesn't improve in the near future, he might be compelled to quit coaching and look for other ways to survive.
"If this situation persists, then I will have to look elsewhere for a job. Last year was a total waste and it looks like this year will be equally bad. We had 45 trainees at our academy before Covid and we are now down to 7. Even when restrictions were easing last year, parents weren't willing to risk their children contracting Covid. None of the academies have been running at full steam. Almost 90% of the academies are suffering losses and many are shutting down too," says Shekhawat, who was a national-level shooter himself before dropping out of the sport for financial reasons.
The narrative is similar across sporting disciplines all over the country. While government-funded academies are able to manage, private academies are taking the biggest hit. Former shuttler Anup Sridhar, who is head coach at the Karnataka Badminton Academy in Bengaluru, says he has taken a 100% salary cut since the onset of the pandemic. Asked how he was managing, he quipped: "I married smartly. My wife works for a medical nutrition company and she is doing very well. Right now, I am totally dependent on her." Worryingly for these coaches and academies, the number of students coming for training has significantly reduced over the last 12 months. Even when the number of Covid cases had been brought under control at the end of last year, parents were wary of sending their kids for training given the risks involved. "We have had around 125 trainees drop out since March last year. Even before this second wave, there were no signs of things returning to normalcy," informs Sridhar.
The sport of swimming has had its own challenges. With the summer months of April, May and June being the peak period for beginners to take up swimming, noted swimming coach KK Mukundan revealed that most academies are losing out on a major chunk of their business for the second straight year.
"The Chennai district association gave around `8000 as compensation to all the coaches in Chennai in October last year. But the coaches are suffering again," Mukundan says. While coaches in many sports are resorting to online classes, they are aware that it is nowhere near as effective as tutoring them on the field of play. Chennai-based football coach Aldroy Atkinson, who runs an academy in the city, says that there is no value addition from these online sessions. "I feel guilty taking fees when online coaching doesn't have that same impact. We are repeating the same things that we did last year during these online classes," he says. While the 44-year-old Atkinson was able to overcome financial strains last year due to his savings, he is left wondering how he is going to get through the latest crisis.
Apart from the coaches, junior athletes, too, face an uncertain future. According to an official in the Mumbai Cricket Association (MCA), the lack of match practice will hurt age-group cricketers in the long run. "Junior cricketers are suffering a lot. They have almost missed two years of their career. Cricketers eligible at the U-19 level and wanting to play the U-19 World Cup might have to miss out and directly play U-23s. Match practice at a junior age is most important. If they are not getting that practice, a lot of talent will be wasted. It is their misfortune," the MCA official observes.