Importance of Sports By Kavin Shanmugam

Importance of Sports

  By Kavin Shanmugam

Do you think sports should be given equal priority as studies? If you think NOT, then I think you are wrong in the current Indian context. Sports should be given equal priority as studies in India, in order for the people who excel in sports to succeed in life and to make the nation proud in sporting events.Me and a lot of my school going friends strongly believe that sports should be given equal priority as studies as it improves physical and mental health of students and will eventually make the nation proud.

We all know that good amount of physical activity improves health. WHO recommends at least one hour of physical activity for growing children as helps in developing muscles and bones. It also helps in maintaining a healthy body weight. In today’s schedule, with long commutes school going children hardly get time to play at home. In schools like Inventure, where sports are given some importance we have only 40 minutes of PE per day. This amounts to 5/45 periods a week. This falls short of WHO recommendation by 20 minutes. And PE is the first thing to be cut on any special occasion. In many other schools, there are far less number of hours of PE. The following table shows data about schools nearby.

School	No of Hours of PE/week
Greenwood High	2 PE, 1 Yoga
DPS East	1 PE, 1 Yoga
NPS	1 PE

But more hours of sports is considered a distraction by many people. This can be managed by putting a schedule for play and sticking to it.  Talented students who would like to take up sports as a career can be given exception in attendance.

It is proven that sports also helps in brain development by expanding memory and increasing focus. It requires repetition and practice to master a shot in tennis or a drive in cricket, thus expanding memory.  Over and above, we have to admit that team sports help improve team work. Carl Lewis said “The best kids are going to become the best, but the best thing about it is that you are going to learn in playing is about winning and loosing and team work. Teammates and arguments are going to influence positively for the test of your life”. Remember that team work is the most important life skill, best learned through team sports.

In today’s world, many children don’t know how deal with failures. Winning and losing is a daily part of sports and kids get used to it. Michael Jordan said “I’vemissed more than 9000 shots in my career, I have lost almost 300 game winning shots, 26 times I missed the winning shots, and that is why I succeed”. This shows that, no matter how much he failed, he wanted to do better.

India’s track record in Olympics is very bad. Don’t we remember the statement Pierce Morgan made, “Country with 1.2 billion people wildly celebrates with two loosing medals, How embarrassing is that!” Why did this happen? One reason is the lack of importance given to sports by Indian Politicians and parents. Indian parents wants their kids to study and become doctors or engineers. And politicians do not build enough facilities. If this continues, we will stay at the same Olympics rank or move lower.

Some people say that the money required to make facilities is a lot.  India’s GDP rank is 3. If Jamaica, with far lower GDP can make facilities for sports, we can make more facilities. That is why they have players like Usain Bolt.  We just need to give sports the right importance and attention to get ahead.

By now, I hope you are convinced that sports should be given equal priority in the current context.  Otherwise we will be facing a worse medal tally in Olympics and would be left with lots of unfit citizens.