Dream Children in the Mahindra United Football Tournament

One of the big highlights for the Dream Football programme in the month of November was 2 teams participating in the Under 14 Mahindra Football Tournament.

On the 12 of November 2010, 18 children from The Annaswamy school battled against The National Public School Indiranagar. The team played with immense teamwork and confidence and lost the match with a close 1-0. Most of these children were playing on such a big ground for the very first time.

On the 17 of November children from various partner centers such as Ananya, Makkala Jagrithi & Bosco Vikas entered the tournament as a combined Dream A Dream team. They played against Army Public School where most of the children were twice their size. The first 20 minutes of the game went extremely well giving the team confidence and hope of their victory. Unfortunately they lost the game 3-0.

The highlight for this match was the goal keeper, Hemanth Kumar from Balamandira who was selected for the Under 14 football camp where he will get the chance to train and practice with children from main stream schools and have the opportunity to get selected for the under 14 Karnataka team.

What really got everybody’s notice from both these matches was the confidence with which the children played. They usually practice on a ground 1/3^rd the size of the ground for the tournament. The children from the other schools are much taller & yet they attacked them straight on. One of the boys from Bosco vikas, Reddy played extremely well even though was the smallest boy on the field.

The score line never spoke the truth. The truth is that Dream A Dream did win. Every time a player chased a bigger opponent with conviction, every time he picked himself after a fall, every time he jumped to head a ball when his opponent was a shoulder and a head taller than him, every time he knew that he had not failed but made a few mistakes that had to be rectified - he had won.

Participation in tournaments gives them the exposure and opportunity to play with other children and get the feel of playing in a tournament. It also gives some children who have exceptional talent to get spotted and selected for further training giving them a chance to play in state and national level tournaments. Most importantly, it helps build their life skills such as confidence, self-esteem, discipline, team-work and sportsmanship.