Sports council rethinks scheduling

Sports council rethinks scheduling

BANDUNG (JP): The National Sports Council's research and
development department is looking at ways to reschedule national
sports events and national training schedules to help athletes.

For many years, the council has staged the National Games in
September at the start of the school semester.

Indra Djati Sidi, the council's head of research and
development, told The Jakarta Post recently that some
organizations had problems gathering athletes for events because
of random event scheduling.

"Ideally, national training must last one month. Here we have
one year training," he said, adding that athletes were getting
bored with their programs which they had abandoned their jobs and
studies for.

"Imagine an athlete who leaves work and only counts on his
allowance as an athlete from the council. Its a big sacrifice,"
he said.

Many athletes, who are still at high school or university,
will think twice before leaving their courses to join national
training because of clashing schedules between studies and
training.

"The Summer Olympic Games is always staged during the holiday
season. The NCAA basketball competitions in the United States
always take place on weekends. Professional athletes can play on
work days but in the evening," he said.

Indra said athletes had to choose an alternative. They could
quit work or they could choose not compete in an event and miss
their peak.

"People should understand that sport and athletes'
achievements are important. But they are yet to show their
appreciation of sport," he said.

Indonesia must be satisfied with its limited budget for sport.

"Our national coaches, who have adequate academic training and
methods, are few in number. They don't even have facilities,"
Indra said.

Indra said that hiring foreign coaches might be a solution.
But many sports organizations could not afford them.

He said local talent scouting was inefficient.

"Our talent scouting program is only for national training.
But the fatal factor is that old athletes, who joined the
National and SEA Games, still dominate training. The regeneration
program has not gone smoothly."

Indra said there were three key programs in national sports
development: training for the SEA Games, Asian Games and Golden
Garuda mega-project.

"If all goes well, we hope that in 10 years we can see more
young talent in all provinces," he said, adding that good
scheduling could guarantee the training programs' success. (ahy)