Every ear, we as educators stand at this crossroad. What do you do if an athlete performs well and doesn’t have the necessary funds to progress? The more an athlete excels the costlier it becomes.
If he or she comes from a school in Hanover Park or some township, what can they do?
In the many years of being involved in school sports, it breaks your heart if an excellent athlete is turned away. The disappointment is tangible and you as an educator find yourself digging deep into your pockets to help. But it is not enough.
Confronting parents about the money issue for their excellent athlete child is a big problem. First thing they ask is “can’t the school help?” The school is in a community where drugs, gangsterism and social problems prevail. Parents don’t pay school fees, but it is not the child’s problem. All the child wants to do is run, jump or throw a discus or something.
The higher bodies’ budget is constrained. There is no money.
So how do we as educators keep learners and athletes off the streets? Local businesses don’t care, the ward councillors are not bothered.
To get an athlete to perform on the track takes tremendous time, sacrifice and discipline. In the same breath educators try to coach and work on athletes’ life skills.
But the burning question is: What do we do if and when there’s no funds?
The following year you don’t see that excellent athlete again, the dream to make it big in athletics is gone, and the ugly evil of social ills slowly but surely takes its toll on these once-excellent athletes.
I pray God will help that injustice does not prevail.
* Peter Neil Hendricks, Hanover Park.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.
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