Part 4: Let schools help sports dreams take flight

Sportsmanship , Perseverance, Integrity, Respect, Inspiration and Teamwork. These are the six words plastered on the glass doors outside the indoor gymnasium at the Nanyang Technological University Sports Centre.

Along with the National University of Singapore, Nanyang Technological University is the pride of Asian education in general and Singaporean education in particular. In 2011, Nanyang Technological University was still ranked 174th in the world university rankings of Times Higher Education (THE). Currently, the Singapore representative is ranked 30th in the world, 5th in Asia.

Established in 1991, Nanyang Technological University not only has strengths in research and professional training, but also develops sports movements.

"At Nanyang Technological University, we have 24 sports teams, from football, table tennis, badminton, tennis, swimming... all living under one roof called NTU Spirit. Students are encouraged to practice sports to develop themselves. We advise them to practice football this week, then next week they can practice taekwondo, the week after that practice aikido," said Head of the delegation Muhammad Syafiq Bin Juffri, currently working at the Sports Center of Nanyang Technological University.

- Ảnh 2. — The motto of Nanyang Technological University is also the desire for student qualities through sports activities.

The lights at the Nanyang Technological University Sports Center never turn off before 10 p.m. In the campus of tens of thousands of square meters, a series of sports facilities such as 11-a-side football fields (3 clusters of fields), handball courts, badminton courts, tennis courts, swimming pools, multi-purpose gymnasiums (for badminton, volleyball, basketball), gym centers... operate continuously, welcoming hundreds of students every day. Here, students often practice sports after school hours, in addition to compulsory sports at school.

"In most schools, admissions officers will look at grades to evaluate students. However, we encourage students who are good at sports or have artistic talents such as singing, dancing... to come to Nanyang Technological University," Mr. Bin Juffri added.

At the 2025 International Youth Student Football Tournament, the Nanyang Technological University team has a full personnel structure like a professional sports team, including a team leader, head coach, assistant coach, fitness coach, medical expert, and physiotherapist.

The team has both a data analyst and a tactical supporter, Jerome, a student majoring in Sports Science. Jerome is an excellent student who has used his knowledge to analyze video footage, helping the coach shape the playing style and come up with suitable tactics. According to Team Leader Bin Juffri, Nanyang Technological University always encourages students to apply their knowledge into practice.

School sports are not just a trend, but also the foundation of the world's leading sports such as the US, Australia, UK, Spain, France... or closer to Asia, Japan, Korea. Katie Ledecky, the legend of the American swimming village who won 14 Olympic gold medals, chose to enroll at Stanford University (USA) to both study and train for competitions. 75% of the members of the US sports delegation to the Tokyo Olympics (2020) come from school sports. In the US, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is nearly 200 years old, organizing thousands of competitions each year, with about 500,000 students competing in key sports such as swimming, athletics, basketball, soccer, volleyball...

- Ảnh 3. — Katie Ledecky, American swimming legend, is a student at Stanford University.

"In the US, we have a very diverse soccer competition system with many different divisions, developed over the past 20 years," journalist Jere Longman of The New York Times shared with Thanh Nien Newspaper. Soccer teams have management boards that raise sponsorship to have money to operate the team, pay players' salaries, buy equipment and train.

It is a superior model that many excellent school sports in Asia, including Japan, have adopted.

Kaoru Mitoma once turned down a professional contract offer from Kawasaki Frontale to study physical education at Tsukuba University, which has a strong school football scene. Here, Mitoma studied and dominated the university tournament, then returned to football after graduating. Now, he is a top star in Japanese football, currently playing for Brighton & Hove Albion in the Premier League.

- Ảnh 4. — Kaoru Mitoma is a product of Japanese school football.

The story of students studying, practicing sports and reaching the top of the world has become familiar in many countries. Leonz Eder, acting president of the International University Sports Federation (FISU) in Switzerland, asserted that universities should help students build a "dual career", or in other words, help students study, research and compete in sports.

According to Head of Delegation Muhammad Bin Juffri: "The development of cultural and sports movements is always promoted to contribute to shaping the personality and character of students". That is integrity, team spirit, mutual support, the ability to push oneself to overcome limits, physical development to become a well-rounded person.

However, in Vietnam, school sports develop at a very slow pace. Vietnamese athletes have to put aside their studies to pursue professional sports from a very young age, especially in specific sports such as football, gymnastics, weightlifting, etc. The "fighting cock training" model requires athletes to focus on daily training, practice at very high intensity, and continuously train and compete. The cultural education of athletes has not received due attention, leading to the obvious consequence that athletes after retirement lack the basic foundation to find a stable job.

The solution that many athletes are applying is to register for additional classes on sports and training at sports schools to get a degree, to make their career after retirement easier. "We try to study to get a degree, but we don't know what to do with the degree after that, because everything is still unclear," an athlete who participated in the ASIAD shared with Thanh Nien Newspaper.

That is the common answer of many athletes, when studying seems to be just to get a degree, but how to absorb knowledge, apply it to what career, learn to keep up with the changing needs of society every day... is beyond their reach. For athletes who have spent their youth immersed in the gym, experiencing the pressure of continuous achievement, it is not simple to find a job with such a "simple" supplementary and in-service learning method.

While professional athletes struggle with their studies, university students lack the opportunity to reach the top. According to a sports leader, very few universities and colleges in Vietnam currently own standard stadiums, gymnasiums, swimming pools, etc., even specialized sports training schools do not have good facilities. Not only do they lack facilities, but educational thinking in many places still emphasizes teaching theory, but does not attach importance to comprehensive physical development for students, when sports are only an extracurricular activity, with less than 8 to 10 hours of teaching per week. Therefore, it is very rare for professional Vietnamese athletes to come up from school sports. If there are any, they mainly come from specialized sports training schools. The student sports competition system in Vietnam is not strong, when it only stops at a few student football fields, indoor sports, etc.

Good news for Vietnamese sports, as some universities have focused on building stadiums, gymnasiums, and have clubs that operate in a systematic and professional manner. However, to have students who can both study well and develop their athletic qualities so that Vietnamese sports can hope to have quality "seeds", I'm afraid it's still a long way off, requiring policies, overall development strategies and larger investment sources to "flow" into universities. (to be continued...)

Source: https://thanhnien.vn/ky-4-de-truong-hoc-chap-canh-nhung-giac-mo-the-thao-185250614213230482.htm