Sports and education should not be separated

TIMES INT'L

Dear Editor,
The brutal honesty of the secretary of the Fruta Conquerors Football Club must be admired. In a nutshell, some simple but very profound things – sportsmen cannot always make a living from their game, in this case football, at least not locally.
Even if scholarships are on offer, their lack of a basic education disqualifies them from winning one, and sponsorship for many sports, again, namely football, are not forthcoming.
As for the education factor, many young people see sports as an escape from school. This is so especially when it comes to cricket, football and boxing.
This attitude can be traced back to school sports, since competitions among classes and schools are mostly run off during the school term and on actual school days. When it comes to the track and field season, it is like free-for-all sessions, and even non- participants hardly do any schoolwork.
I believe in both aspects of life, that is education and sports, and one can complement the other. So from the inception, one must not be at the expense of the other.
Should this be so, on leaving school, the athletically gifted can embark on a sporting career, and with their high school foundation already intact, they have something to fall back on.
It will not hurt to trace down how Guyana’s successful sportsmen actually made it. Definitely, it was not any form of corporate sponsorship, nor from the government.
The more talented ones, in any discipline too, who made it, got a lot of help from family members and good friends.
Usually, sponsors come on board when a person is already established.
The hard ground work was done by the few unmentioned and unknown supporters. This again says that education must not be left out of sports.
There is no sense in dreaming about landing some big deals. It all comes back to linking sports and education at all times.
Yours truly,
Conrad Chabrol

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