Sports, over the world, is a phenomenon that has gone a long way to be such an important factor in countries around the world. Boosting the economy, unifying regions, maximizing individuals, building image are some of the advantages sports comes with. And going by this, priority ensues it.
The COVID-19 pandemic came and brought a halt to almost all sporting activities around the world. It took some time before sports was given the green light to take centre stage once again. This explains why tier-A tournaments like the Tokyo Olymipics and Euro 2020 were put off and had to be played in the year 2021.
In most topflight football leagues in Europe, the fans were locked out of the stadium initially when football returned in a bid to contain the COVID-19 virus quite vehement during the time. It was strange playing a competitive match in an empty stadium. But what had to be done had to be done to ensure that football as a sports doesn’t suffer on the back of the pandemic.
This also was the narrative of some other sports as organizers found a way to ensure that sports continue even abridged in conjunction with efforts of governments contending to contain the virus in the highest possible degree.
Bringing the narrative down to Nigeria, it also took a while before sports returned in the country but eventually did with full capacity in stadiums dwarfed to ensure that the pandemic never get to be spread on account of staging sporting activities. In other words, sports does not necessarily have to be the fall guy in spreading the virus, hence compromises had to be made to eschew a full capacity stadium in order to be able to contain the pandemic.
If sports were to be an unproductive and irrelevant phenomenon in these countries cum systems never would they attempt going to the drawing board to plot out strategies to contain the virus in a bid to have sports reign. To them it was worth it owing to the wins sports brings to the country as a whole. It was way too costly for them to keep sports on ice for long a time, hence the need to improvise to ensure that this rewarding phenomenon comes back to fetch the returns it fetches them.
In MAPOLY, there was once a time it was glory days when it has to do with sports in the institution. Competitions like that of the SUG Cup, The Rector’s Cup and the like were always on the go. Even that of external competitions had Team MAPOLY represented competitively. However, these days, the reverse is what you see.
While the management might want to pin this down to the pandemic and the school’s strategic efforts at combating it to ensure everyone is safe and protected from it, if you take a walk down memory lane, you will come to reckon that even before the pandemic broke out, the school had been underwhelming when it comes to sporting activities. Competitions we usually have started going into extinction with less priority placed on them. We then and now still miss out on competitions that give us a shout among other institutions in the country and expose the talents in the school to better infrastructures and systems.
Talking infrastructures, the school also has a low scorecard in this aspect as most sporting facilities in the school are in dismal state that does not allow for effective competition or even training for the talents in the school.
Maybe a little bit exposure on why sports needs to be prioritized will do. One of the ways to ensure that students remain intellectually astute is to engage them in sporting activities. One of the ways to unite students and stakeholders in the school is to organize sporting activities. One of the ways to improve the school’s image out there in the public is to participate in external competitions and do well there. One of the ways to have the name of the school celebrated in the public space is to spot talents in the school, invest in them via trainings and exposure, and have their growth in the sporting world facilitated; by so doing, their growth will always be traced back to the institution which invariably is good advertisement for the school.
The wins, definitely, are no pushovers. They are all worthy of investments – material and otherwise – as they portend growth to the institution. Admittedly, these are tough times in the school – the containment of the pandemic and the alleged fiscal infirmity of the school – still it doesn’t validate putting sports in limbo.
The need to improvise, the need to be inventive, the need to be strategic to ensure that sports does not ice in the ice need to surface. It does not necessarily have to be full-blown. The world never made it full-blown in its recovery. We can do same and not shut ourselves out of rewarding wins.
