Always a sport

Although there are many who are disciplined enough to keep working hard during the summer,there sure is a slight fluctuation in the number of players during the sweltering months of the year. Mandar Tamhane,secretary of Deccan XI Football Club and manager of the national football team,believes that this is because many of them travel out of the city for post-examination vacationing. “By the time the summer ends,the number of people applying to our various teams increases so drastically that we sometime have to turn some away,” he says.

Football isn’t the only sport which the youngsters seems to be engrossing themselves in this summer. “I love kick-boxing,” declares 18-year-old student, Ishitaa Metha. “It’s not only a good way to stay fit,but is also a great self-defence technique.” There are a lot of opportunities to learn martial arts or other such self-defence techniques in Pune. “We have a lot different batches,like taekwondo,yoga and kick-boxing and every summer,we get at least 22 to 25 new students in each batch. All of them are usually under the age of 25,” says Avinash Shrirang,owner of Universal Power Martial Arts,Wanowrie.

Horse-riding also seems to be picking up as a popular summer option. “The number of people who sign up for riding almost triples during the summer,” says Rohan More,MD of Japalouppe Equestrian Centre,Talegaon. “During these past two months,we would have given about 3,500 riding lessons and considering we only give about 1,400 in the rest of the year,summer is one of the busiest times for us.”

Some teenagers play actively in school,and make sure that the pace doesn’t slacken during their vacations. Fourteen-year-old Varsha Gokhale looks at it as pure recreation. “I don’t enjoy staying at home all day. I play basketball in school,so I practice during my vacations as well. It’s just fun,” she says.