Sports, be it football, throw ball or even volley ball has an uncanny way of uniting the community. The 2019 Sports Championships under the banner of Regional Unity Championship brought communities from the different regions under one roof. While the games demanded a competitive spirit on the ground, the motto was ‘may the best team win’. As organisers, it was heartening to see regions lauding for their individual teams. The magic of the game wove together participants from all regions and the participants shared stories of their regions, their strategies and their dreams. The sharing of stories will stay with them for a life time. The evening is a time of bonding and engaging with new friends. The vision of our Imam of bringing communities together is subtly but surely being implemented.
The final day delivers a crisp, efficient flow of events. This perfection needs great planning and strategy. Organising a sports event requires good leadership that takes the final decisions, an organising team that is responsible for the planning and delivery of the programme and a team of dedicated volunteers that are ready to learn and implement tasks assigned to them. The tasks are numerous ranging from finalising the dates and venue of the sports meet, deciding on the ceremonies that will be conducted at the meet, the programme protocol, arranging accommodation, host families and food services, ensuring insurance is in place, doctor on call and clinics in the event of mishap, communication and compilation of emergency contact lists. The media and marketing team has to be in action to reach out. Venues need to be finalised, Juries to be invited, scoring boards to be updated. The communication team updating constantly the current status of the event and of course budgets matter so the finance team has to be know exactly what is been planned as they need to budget the event. Each role helps to build personalities and mould the community to be the leaders of the future.
The events were launched in January with the Football being flagged off on 20th January at Chatrabhuj Narsee School Mumbai, followed by Throw ball and Volleyball on the 27th January Prajna High School Mumbai and Dahisar Jamatkhana.
The Regional Building Champions in-charge, Mr Sahir Samnani expressed that his team got lot of requests and positive feedback from the kids who were a part of the Building Champions training program. As volunteers, they always wanted to give kids a platform, to grow in the field. “Mawlana Hazar Imam loves sports and wants our young leaders to come together and build their own tenacious units to compete with the world outside, beyond our community. Regional Unity Championship is the first ever tournament that gave our juniors, along with the grownups, a chance to evolve and function their best on the field.”
The competition began on a grand scale with all Jamati leaders being present along with their proficient players. During the initiation of the program, the Western India Chairman Mr Nurali Rayani said, “The regional tournament for the three sports are back after a gap of many years bringing much cheer amongst our youth and the community. Identified on the basis of popularity, it is a move to build capacity amongst our youth constituency for these sports.
