School Hockey Final Exposes Lack of Basic Facilities for Young Players

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Musarrat Ullah Jan , KikxNow , Digital Creator

PESHAWAR: An alarming situation emerged during the final of the Inter-School District Hockey Tournament, where young players were left without even basic refreshments.

The final was played between Government Higher Secondary School Chamkani and Government Higher Secondary School Cantt No. 2, with the participating players largely comprising students of seventh and eighth grades. For several of these young players, it was reportedly their first experience playing on a professional hockey turf.

Despite the physical demands of the match, no proper arrangement for refreshments was made for the young players. As the game progressed, several children became visibly tired. During the break, some players continued drinking water in an effort to cope with physical exhaustion.

In a particularly telling scene, teachers accompanying the teams had brought candies and sugarcane pieces themselves for the children. Instead of an organized arrangement by the tournament organizers, the basic needs of the young players were being managed by their teachers.

The tournament was organized with the cooperation of the Regional Sports Office Peshawar and the Education Department, while the Provincial Hockey Association was responsible for organizing the competitions.

This raises a serious question: if basic hydration and refreshments cannot be properly arranged for schoolchildren playing in a district-level hockey final, how can the authorities claim to be developing the grassroots structure of Pakistan's national sport?

School-level hockey is the foundation from which future players are supposed to emerge. These children are not professional athletes; they are young students being introduced to competitive hockey. Ensuring drinking water, basic refreshments and appropriate player support should therefore be treated as a basic responsibility, not an optional facility.

The concerned authorities need to explain who was responsible for providing these facilities and what arrangements had been made for the young players.

Organizing a tournament is not enough. If the objective is genuinely to develop hockey at the grassroots level, the welfare and basic requirements of the children participating in these competitions must also be taken seriously.

#SchoolHockey #Hockey #KhyberPakhtunkhwa #Peshawar #PakistanHockey #GrassrootsSports #SportsDevelopment #YouthSports #RegionalSportsOffice #EducationDepartment

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