The Game Beyond Winning

When I joined Akanksha in 2004, the sports programme was very different from what it is today. I was one of the few people running it, and between 2004 and 2007, I travelled across 32 centres on my own. Each centre had two sessions, with two sports covered the entire year. It was a demanding job, but it also gave me the opportunity to understand what sport could mean to a child beyond simply playing a game.

At the time, the programme was built around a few familiar sports. In Pune, we had volleyball and football, while in Mumbai, it was football and hockey. We also introduced movement-based activities that focused on the fundamentals of physical education. The children trained throughout the year and participated in inter-city competitions, with teams travelling between Mumbai and Pune.

But as our schools grew, I began to realise that we needed more than individual sporting activities. We needed a structure.

In 2008, we started developing a formal Physical Education curriculum. We experimented, learnt from what worked and eventually created a framework that we still use today. Our vision was simple: physical education should contribute not only to a child’s fitness, but also to their physical and social well-being.

As Akanksha grew from four schools to 28, so did the range of sports. We consciously recruited people with different sporting expertise, rather than simply bringing in more people who knew the same games. We also introduced internal competitions so that participation was not limited to a handful of talented students.

One of our biggest challenges, however, was convincing parents that sport was not taking children away from academics. Awareness about the value of sport was still low. We had to explain that sporting skills could open up opportunities and, more importantly, that sport could coexist with education.

We created a simple balance: children had to attend school and complete their homework before they could participate in sports. As children began winning at district and state levels, parents began to see the possibilities for themselves.

Some of the most rewarding moments have come from seeing what sport can do beyond the field. I remember a girl with diabetes whose parents were initially worried about letting her participate. But within a few months, her health had improved significantly, and she became a regular participant in sporting events.

For me, physical education has always been about more than fitness. We teach children about their bodies, muscles, injuries and even the science behind movement. I remember a child visiting a doctor and identifying pain in his latissimus dorsi muscle. The doctor was surprised that a schoolchild knew the name of the muscle. This shows how learning can extend far beyond the classroom.

Today, our students participate in more than 30 sports, with internal training in 14 of them and external experts supporting the others. Three years ago, we also introduced a specialised sports programme, which now has around 1,200 children across three cities.

We currently have 1,200+ district-level champions, 187 state-level representations, and 8 national team members.

Perhaps the biggest lesson sports teaches is collaboration. Children learn that everyone brings something different to the field. They learn to compete, lose, reflect, improve and try again. That, to me, is the real purpose of sport.