Govt. Teacher Spends Salary To Produce Champions
In many parts of India, families grieve when a daughter is born. However, Sanjay Pathak sacrificed his life to coach young girls and help them accomplish their goals.
In many parts of India, families grieve when a daughter is born. She may spend all her life under a veil and with the sole purpose of getting married and then birthing and caring for children. There are 55 girls from Laxmipur village of Siwan district in Bihar who are fighting to change this attitude. These young girls are training in sports at the Rani Laxmibai Sports Academy, under the guidance of their geography teacher and coach, Sanjay Pathak. Sanjay Pathak provides training free of cost to girls and his efforts and sacrifices have produced 70 national and international players in football, handball, athletics, and other sports over the past 10 years. Sanjay is not a formal coach. He is doing this because he is passionate about training young talent in his region. His journey to becoming a sports coach began in 2009, after he was posted to Adarsh government middle school in the village when two girls, Tara and Putul, wanted to participate in the local sports tournament. Initially Sanjay too did not agree but then he agreed to register them. To his surprise, the girls won a gold medal in athletics.
After this incident Sanjay thought, “If the girls performed so well without any coaching, there must be many such others in the village. I felt it was my duty to enable holistic development of students. I started training them before and after school hours.” Inspired by Tara and Putul, other girls soon joined and in the next couple of months, around 100 girls from the village joined him to play football, rugby, handball and for athletics. Sanjay started learning about football from YouTube and other online media. By November 2009, Sanjay had a girls’ football team ready to compete at district and state levels. The girls went on to play in several competitions and earned recognition. Many of the girls trained by Sanjay have represented India in Nepal, Tajikistan, Beirut, Lebanon and other national sports competitions. In January 2019, Sanjay also opened a trust to seek donations as the locals were not in favour of training the girls. He said, “I used my salary to sponsor food, travel, and other expenses. I sold my gold rings to fund their coaching. I requested my wife to mortgage her gold, worth Rs 35,000, for construction of the building. As expenses scaled, family members asked if I was serving the nation, or making my family bankrupt.”
Sanjay said, “People criticised me for coaching only girls, and questioned my character. Villagers and colleagues asked me why he was making girls wear clothes meant for boys. They even alleged that I was spoiling the girls and culture of the village by asking them to make a career in sports.”
Sanjay feels that the perception of villagers is wrong. “They saw the girls wearing shorts and t-shirts. They questioned their character. But no one saw the girls training in torn shoes or with a worn-out football. Nobody observed their sweating or the lack of facility they had. No one came to help them become independent.”
Youngsters from the village harassed the girls, eve teased, and even sang vulgar songs. “The school playground where the girls practised was littered with waste and broken glass bottles to demoralise them. However, we would start again by cleaning the ground.”
Fearing the safety of the players, Sanjay convinced his family to dedicate 2 acres of the 5-acre agricultural land to train them. The land was converted into a football ground. A building with a capacity to host 30 girls came up in December 2020. The building has a dormitory, kitchen and other facilities. It was named Rani Laxmibai Sports Academy. Radha Kumari lost her father when she was young and said that initially her family supported but as travelling for competitions increased, so did restrictions. She also endured many beatings but Sanjay supported her. She later represented the national handball team and is now a grade B national referee. The situation has improved now for the academy, as they received support from Dream Sports in November 2020.
