The joys and agonies of being a sports educator in India

In June, Tamil Nadu played Haryana at the finals of the 2023 Senior Women’s National Football Championship in Amritsar. By the fifty-sixth minute, Haryana led 0-1. Soon after, Tamil Nadu player Priyadarshini S rose over her peers in the opponents’ penalty box and guided a powerful header into the bottom corner of the goal. Her teammates rushed to her and swallowed the player into a joyful embrace.

Almost 3,000 km away in the town of Mannargudi in Tamil Nadu’s Thiruvarur district, a group of young children huddled around a tiny cell phone also erupted in celebrations. These were 20-year-old Priyadarshini’s juniors and former classmates, who watched the match online between their football practice sessions. Tamil Nadu went on to win the championship that day, beating Haryana with a second goal.

After the match, Priyadarshini’s first call was not to her parents, but to the physical education teacher at the Adi Dravidar (Scheduled Caste) Welfare High School, in the village of Savalakaran, in which she had studied. “I told him excitedly that we had won the final and that I had scored a goal,” Priyadarshini recalled, as we sat at a roadside tender coconut water stall in Savalakaran, on a bright and sultry day in...

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