A different ball game
Karan Bir
Even more than 15 years after Bend It Like Beckham put forth the then comic idea of a girl in shorts, playing with the boys in a football field, we haven’t been able to bend the picture much. Well, we’ve seen women excelling in badminton (PV Sindhu, Saina Nehwal), gymnastics and boxing; sadly, there is no presence of women when it comes to football.
Why women are not being able to make a mark in this game? Is it their reluctance to kick the ball that’s pulling them back? Let’s find out the answers from these women footballers from tricity.
Still, a conventional society
“I loved to watch the boys play football in my neighbourhood park and I had a desire to play with them. This is what made me choose football as a game,’’says Dishita Aggarwal (18), a national-level player. She says, “Girls usually don’t opt for football as a sport because of the conventional mindset of society that it’s a harsh game that requires strength. And girls don’t have a proper body structure to play such kind of games.”
Another player, Anjali (19), who studied in Government Model Senior Secondary School, Sector 22- A, Chandigarh, has been playing football since the age of nine. She is dedicated to the game and is interested in learning new freestyle football moves and tactics. Though her parents have been supportive of her choice of the game, she agrees that parents and teachers don’t motivate girls to take up football as it is meant for boys and any girl playing it gets labelled as masculine.
She says, “People believe that girls are either meant to do household chores, maintain their beauty and take up girlie activities rather than playing such boy’s games.”
A girl who battles with the boys
Deepshikha, another student of GMSSS-22 and a 10 time national-level player, says that she was inspired by her coach Bhupinder Singh who trains students at GMSSS-22. She says that he used to train them along with their senior boys and girls. There was no separate coach for girls, but his enthusiasm to bring in more girls into the field, helped her develop a keen interest in football.
The need for more facilities
Deepika, who has played seven national-level women football games, says, “When there are no proper facilities for women players, how can one expect them to excel? As for her, success came because of the tremendous support provided by her coach. She feels there should be more football camps for girls. She criticizes the government for establishing only a limited number of football academies for girls in the city and for providing coaches just before tournaments and not throughout the year.
Time for beti khilao!
Mansi, who is also a student of GMSSS-22 and has been playing football since she was in class VI, feels that parents don’t allow their daughters to play sports because they don’t think it is safe to send their daughters to academies.
A State Award winner, coach Bhupinder says, “I try to make each and every girl of the school play football in order to achieve equality among girls and boys in the field of sports.”
He believes that along with Beti Padhao Beti Bachao, they should add another line to the slogan—Beti Khilao.
