Hockey to keep them coming
Headmaster uses the sport to cut truancy in rural primary school
YONG PENG: When his pupils started to slack in their studies and became truants, he decided to introduce them to hockey.
These youngsters were getting Es and Fs in their academic results.
Three years on, the efforts of rural primary school headmaster Dominig Savarimuthu and his teachers at SJK (T) Ladang Yong Peng have paid off.
Their problematic pupils started attending school regularly. And some of them were accepted into a hockey boarding school to further their studies and training.
His programme, known as Johor Tamil School Impact Hockey Development Programme, has now expanded to at least 15 Tamil schools statewide.
Dominig, who has been an educator for 28 years, said that when he was posted to the school as headmaster six years ago, he had a tough time getting some of the under-performing pupils to come to school.
“More than 90% of the parents here are from low income families. So sometimes they take their children to the estates or plantations to work to earn money.
“Some of the children are also from broken families with abusive parents,” he said.
His biggest fear was that these youngsters would end up on the wrong path, if nothing was done to help them.
Dominig then decided to work with two other teachers, P. Shassi Kumaran and R. Pravin Kumar, all former hockey players, to introduce the sport in his school in January 2018.
“Our main targets were all under-achievers and problematic students from Year Three, Four, Five and Six,” he added.
Funds to purchase the equipment was never a major obstacle as Dominig, being the chairman of Yayasan Kebajikan dan Pendidikan India Negeri Johor, managed to source for the money needed for the project.
“I was fortunate because through this foundation we got RM30,000, which was used not only to set up the hockey team in my school but to help 15 other Tamil schools statewide,” he said.
As the school did not have a proper hockey turf, he said the teachers would send their pupils all the way to a boarding school in Batu Pahat, which was about 40 minutes away, to train weekly.
“We have also been having annual hockey tournaments with other Tamil schools. So far, 300 students and 60 teachers are involved in the sport in Johor,” he said, adding that some of the pupils had also been selected to play for the district and in other friendly matches outside the state.
Since the implementation of the movement control order last year, he said their training activities had been affected, but they managed to carry out a virtual tournament which involved pupils sending in short videos of themselves playing hockey.
“We hope to get more funding to set up more teams in other Tamil schools to expand this game and produce state- and national-level players,” he said, thanking the Johor Education Department, state and national hockey associations and former players for their support.
Their next aim, he said, was to have their own hockey turf in their school.