Cricket bats,basketballs,tennis racquets and even hockey sticks are common equipments for the games or physical activities period in a school set up. But a bow,arrow and the quiver when first presented to a child in the capital,could puzzle them,seeming straight out of an Amar Chitra Katha comic. It was the idea of Sportseed,a sports management company,to bring Olympic disciplines like archery into the hands of most school-going kids in Delhi and surrounding regions. The promise is not to create overnight medal prospects but to make a lifestyle change in the schedule of school kids so that sports comes naturally to them and they develop the Olympic spirit of fairplay,honour and glory. As a start they have joined hands with the Archery Association of India so that their coaches could help them conduct workshops in schools on weekends where demonstrations of archery and motivational videos related to the sport are shown to attract kids to their next step a two day talent hunt. The talent hunt is not a selection trial. It will not just be performance based but potential based. The federation coaches will do a basic evaluation of technique,handling of equipment,their stance and see if the childrens are showing sustained interest. The reason we requested the federations to get involved was so that the idea remains sustainable. We have a two-year plan and we hope to develop a junior archery league by February and take it to eight states in future, Sudhanshu Phadnis,director of Sportseed,with a target of reaching 100 schools by December,said. The first talent hunt will begin from November 6 at Delhi Public School,Rohini. The third step will involve a boot camp each in four different zones of Delhi and NCR where parents can accompany their children and collectively understand the merits of the process. Our goal is to produce some good archers from northern India and when Sportseed approached us we were happy to provide our coaches and equipment for demonstrations in schools. We have already displayed recurve and compound techniques in 10-12 schools Other than that,if some schools show interest in setting up archery academies in their premises,we will help them or if children want to take archery coaching,we are available at Yamuna Sports Complex everyday, Virender Sachdeva,president of the Delhi Archery Federation,said.
