School sports disabilities

(Baonghean) -Besides the AFF Cup (with only 2 matches left to finish), the most notable Southeast Asian sporting event in recent days is the 16th Southeast Asian Student Sports Festival, which is being held from December 12 in Laos. Participating in this Congress, Vietnam has 254 members, including 170 athletes competing in 12/17 sports. It is worth mentioning that the majority of Vietnamese athletes are national athletes with the "label" of students, typically the Taekwondo team, all of whom have just participated in the world championship. According to the regulations, this is not wrong because these athletes are all students of sports schools or are studying part-time at other schools, but...

Two years ago, although the Vietnamese delegation sent a large number of athletes to the congress, they only ranked 4th. While Vietnamese sports in general are ranked first or second in Southeast Asia, the fact that our student sports are inferior to other countries has clearly revealed the shortcomings of school sports. Please remember that the Vietnamese athletes attending the congress include a large number of students from universities and colleges of physical education, who are also professional athletes, but they are still not better than students from other countries.

Phu Dong Sports Festival has not achieved the goal of developing school sports.

The explanation for this is not difficult. Countries like Thailand, Malaysia or Singapore all have “quality” athletes who are also “quality” students. Simply because in these countries, school sports, especially at the university level, are very developed, so the majority of national athletes come from schools. The fact that at the 2007 SEA Games held in Nakhon province (Thailand), 2/3 of the competition venues were located on university campuses is enough to say it all.

In fact, the development orientation of high-performance sports in countries with top sports achievements in the world is based on the socialization of sports, in which school sports is an important branch. They pay attention to and focus on developing sports movements in schools, thereby selecting excellent factors into the national team of athletes to compete at the highest level. Meanwhile, Vietnam takes advantage of "shortcuts" and does the opposite. When there are tournaments, schools "borrow troops" from national teams, and legalize it by allowing athletes to enroll in the school, thus, naturally, the achievements of those athletes will contribute to the race for the school's title. Vietnamese students also have competitions to show off their talents such as the Student Sports Festival, Phu Dong Sports Festival, but the athletes participating in these competitions are all paid athletes of departments and branches and are "half-season fighting cocks". Therefore, the goal of developing school sports of these competitions cannot be achieved.

The reason for the above situation is that Vietnam has not paid attention to school sports, the key point is the poor coordination between the two sectors of Education and Sports. Currently, the two sectors are still "going their separate ways" and have not joined hands to outline a reasonable and harmonious development direction for school sports. The consequence is not only the loss in sports competitions in the international arena, but more deeply, it is the slow increase in physical fitness of Vietnamese people compared to the increase of other countries in the world.

Minh Quan