Developing school sports to create a source of high-performance athletes

Many difficulties

In the context of many difficulties, our province still pays due attention to sports, especially high-performance sports, through preferential mechanisms and policies.

A typical example is Resolution No. 11/2021/NQ-HDND on Regulations on special nutrition regimes and some support policies for coaches and high-performance athletes in Nghe An province. Accordingly, the level of expenditure on nutrition regimes for coaches and athletes during concentrated training and coaching periods and financial support policies for coaches and high-performance athletes from 2022 have all clearly improved compared to before.

Perhaps that is why, when we came to Nghe An Sports Training and Competition Center, even though there is only more than 1 month left until the end of 2023, most of the tournaments of the year have been completed, we still saw the training atmosphere taking place in a disciplined and exciting manner. The center is currently training more than 300 athletes in 20 sports, including: Athletics, weightlifting, sepak takraw, shuttlecock, petanque, chess, swimming, diving, volleyball, table tennis and martial arts (taekwondo, wushu, boxing, traditional martial arts, karate, pencak silat, kickboxing, vovinam, jujitsu, muay and wrestling).

In the past 2 years, the achievements of Nghe An's high-performance athletes have had positive changes; many Nghe An athletes have appeared, creating special impressions in the international arena such as:Nguyen Trong Dung, Pham Thi Hong Thanh, Nguyen Thi My...

According to Mr. Nguyen Hoang Trung - Director of Nghe An Sports Training and Competition Center, up to now, the selection of athletes of the center has been conducted through 2 forms; Training at the facility and through sports tournaments in the province. With the form of training at the facility, the Center signed a contract with the Cultural - Sports and Communication Centers of the districts to open amateur talent classes to discover and provide the Center with athletes with outstanding qualities. With the form of selection through sports tournaments, the coaches will directly monitor the matches and races in sports tournaments from district to provincial level to select athletes who meet the criteria.

However, the Center's selection of talented athletes is facing many difficulties. The most obvious is that the athletes selected for the Center are mainly students, but the coordination with the Department of Education and Training in the detection and selection of athletes has not been closely linked; the province's student sports competitions for many years have been almost unrelated to the subjects trained at the Center. Specifically, out of the 21 subjects being trained at the Center, only table tennis, volleyball, shuttlecock, chess and athletics are included in the physical education program of schools and are included in the Phu Dong Sports Festival at all levels.

Even the provincial sports tournament system does not support the work of discovering and selecting talented athletes for the Center, when many annual provincial tournaments are in sports that are not included in the center's training program such as badminton, tennis, volleyball, tug of war, stick pushing, etc.; while many sports cannot organize provincial tournaments.

Also because of the difficulty in creating a source of athletes, there are no worthy young athletes to succeed them when some core athletes have declined in performance due to injury, age, etc., in recent years, some high-performance sports have shown signs of slowing down, even declining in performance at domestic tournaments such as shuttlecock kicking, wrestling, volleyball, petanque, etc.

On the other hand, currently, many families and people, especially in urban areas, do not support their children's participation in sports activities and do not consider this a profession, so many children with talent and good stature cannot be selected. Diving coach Ho Phi Luoc once confided: "There are athletes who are predicted to have great potential to develop swimming and diving, but their families do not support them, so we are helpless..." In addition, the selection of some specific sports such as chess, swimming, table tennis, etc. requires recruiting young athletes (6 to 7 years old), so it is difficult to mobilize families as well as manage them.

Need to promote the development of school sports

Sports experts all agree that in order to improve the quality of resources for high-performance sports, it is important that the sports industry has an appropriate mechanism to increase the selection of talented athletes right from the grassroots and schools.

Mr. Nguyen Van Ky - Director of the Center for Culture - Sports and Communication of Quynh Luu district said that there needs to be close coordination between the Department of Culture and Sports and the Department of Education and Training.

“In Quynh Luu district, for many years, there has been close coordination between the two sectors in discovering and searching for talents. The district Department of Education and Training has directed schools across the district to increase the organization of sports development activities such as extracurricular activities according to interests, extracurricular training hours for school teams serving Phu Dong Sports Festivals at all levels and gifted classes of the district. Thanks to that, Quynh Luu has discovered and provided the province with many outstanding athletes, not only in football but also in athletics and swimming,” said Mr. Ky.

Martial artist Bui Duy Vinh - Chairman of Nghe An Martial Arts Federation said that currently, more than half of the province's high-performance sports training subjects are martial arts, so the discovery of athletes in these subjects needs to rely on the support and assistance of martial arts clubs from communes, wards to districts, cities, towns, martial arts masters and coaches at the grassroots level. In addition, the Department of Culture and Sports needs to coordinate with the Department of Education and Training to pilot the teaching of some martial arts subjects such as karate, boxing, vovinam... in schools, both diversifying physical education activities in schools and developing the movement for high-performance sports.

It can be seen that, in order for the province's high-performance sports to maintain their achievements and have more athletes winning medals in regional, continental and world tournaments, the work of selecting talented athletes needs to be paid more attention and focused. In the coming time, it is necessary to promote socialization to attract funding sources to organize more tournaments for students to discover talented athletes; promote the development of school sports to create a solid foundation for high-performance sports./.