(Authored by: Nilanjan Datta, Director of Sports, Woxsen University)
In an era, where results remain the benchmark of every task, there will be debates, especially against the background of the Pais Olympics and recent results in other sports.
The Paris Olympics points to the American college sporting system that has produced most gold-winning athletes. The Olympic podium is getting younger with every edition, and at 14 years and 86 days old, Arisa Trew became the youngest Olympic medallist in history when she won the gold medal in the women’s park skateboarding event.
What in India? At 14 years old, most kids are in love with the mobile, and their parents feel secure with their kids staying in front of their eyes. Worse, most schools, despite preaching that kids are to be put into sports, haven’t yet been dynamic enough to make sports compulsory as a subject or build their infra.
Result? Lament on social media, seminars, blame everyone but yourself. But do we possess a proper sporting University set-up in India?
Not really, but someone is standing out in the crowd. The best private University in South India – Woxsen University, Hyderabad, with its 65-acre sports complex – the largest in Asia leads the pack.
The vision to allow champions to train, and inculcate discipline within the students and society in general – all joining hands to stand on the Olympic podium waving the Tricolour drives University. Today we have one, tomorrow we will have a couple, and thereafter the count will increase.
Woxsen, the sporting oasis of the country boasts of a 9-lane athletic track within a FIFA-certified football field, fully floodlit, an indoor badminton arena of 8 courts, a floodlit cricket ground, 3 lifestyle gyms along with an indoor spin bike studio plus multiple futsal, volleyball, tennis, pickleball, basketball courts along with a sand volleyball court, squash courts, TT, Pool and Billiards arena, etc is what India requires at every educational institute. And that’s just Phase 1 of the infra. More stay in the pipeline.
All of that has been substantiated by top-quality foreign and Indian coaches – in almost every discipline, some of whom have even coached National teams. Yes, that’s an Indian University, aiming to better the American set-up, an initiative of a private set-up.
The 1.4 billion asset needs such infra to train on. The 1.4 billion hearts have been dying for such a platform to hone their skills which till now, despite being promised and spoken about hasn’t yet been delivered all over.
Let’s backtrack.
Post Independence since 1947, till 2010, we were just mere happy participants, intending to compete with sportsmanship spirit, trying to close gaps, which always got yawning at the global stage despite our best. Sports was never our priority.
But no more. An Indian student or an athlete nowadays has the best of the world in India in an Indian University. If we use it, we train to win. The choice is ours.
Edited by Maanas Upadhyay
