JOIN US To tap the sporting talent at the school level, Gurukul Trust, a non-profit organisation in association with Sports Authority of India, announced the launch of the School Sports Promotion Foundation (SSPF) on Monday.
The foundation will organise sports tournaments across the country to identify talent and arrange to nurture it and take them through the city, district, state, zonal and national level of competitive sport. At the next level, it will arrange to provide sports coaching to those talented youth who are identified through these tournaments at all levels.
To begin with, SSPF will focus on football and cricket, but plans to turn its attention to disciplines like tennis, basketball and athletics from the second year onwards. The new games are expected to be added every year.
SSPF hopes to reach out to around 1,00,000 secondary and senior secondary schools irrespective of their ownership, economic or social strata they operate in or the board they are affiliated to. In the next phase, rural, sub-urban elementary schools with a strong focus on rural sports would be included in the programme.
They, however, will be beginning with 5000 schools in the inaugural year during the three-month window, beginning from October this year. Secretary Sports Ajit Sharan launched the web portal of SSPF.