SAI, SSPF target grassroots for National Talent Search

In a bid to identify and nurture sports talent at the grassroot level, The Gurukul Trust, a non-profit philanthropic trust already working with schools across the country, in association with SAI, today announced the launch of the School Sports Promotion Foundation (SSPF).
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.
SSPF will roll out Football and Cricket, to start with in the first year of its operations and other sports like Tennis, Basketball and Athletics will be introduced from the second year onwards, with new games being 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.
Chairman SSPF Om Pathak talked about his programme in detail, "Most of our future champions are in schools today and it is here we need to pro-actively scout for talent, nourish and prepare them to participate and win and give India its due glory in sports as well. SSPF is aimed towards bridging the existing need gap through a structure d system wherein we hope to eventually reach each and every district in the country to unearth talent and empower them to realise their potential."

Secretary Sports Ajit Sharan, who launched the web portal of SSPF said, "School sports is the most important cog in nurturing the culture of sports in the country. Only if majority of children are exposed to right training methods and coaching, India can dream to be a powerhouse in sports."
Commenting on the launch of SSPF, Sports Authority of India Director General Injeti Srinivas said, "SSPF is indeed a welcome step forward, through which we hope to identify potential sport stars of tomorrow at an early age. The scale of the initiative is colossal and potentially offers a long-term grassroots development programme."

"While SAI has the coaching expertise and the knowledge base required to produce champions, the partnership with SSPF will allow us to penetrate through the huge schools network and identify talent early." he added.