Sports fever soaring: Delhi-NCR academies report surge

The ongoing wave of Covid-19 has driven most indoors, but come to talk of sports and coaches in the academies inform how residents are enrolling themselves now, more than before. Some say that since sports help stay fit and build immunity, many parents are booking sessions for their young ones.

It’s pretty common to think that when most places are experiencing a lull, when it comes to business, due to the ongoing wave of Covid, it might be the same case for sports centres. But, sports academies in Delhi-NCR share that they have been inundated with enquires since this Covid wave hit.

Sports coaches and owners of academies share they are compelled to refuse some bookings as the number of enrolments has increased of late, and they cannot allow too many people due to Covid restrictions.

Gyms in the city are closed, and it seems that residents are taking to sports to stay fit. “Not just enquiries, even bookings have increased by 50%,” says Sachin Singh, from Play Tennis Academy, adding: “People seem to have understood that the virus is here to stay for longer, and realised that sports is the only thing that they can do to continue to stay fit and build their health. Guess that’s why a lot of new queries have been coming our way, with the interest to join.”

Sharad Kumar, from Progressive Tennis Academy, informs that he had closed his academy due to the sudden increase in Covid cases, but is being compelled to reopen it sooner than he had planned. “We are getting calls and messages, and people are asking, ‘Why are you not opening?’ ‘When will it open?’ Every day we would get calls and not from our old students but also from new people who want to enrol themselves with us. So we will now reopen sooner than what was planned,” he adds.

Being a safe form of physical exercise, sports is also luring people to enrol themselves alongside their young ones. “My daughter goes for tennis coaching. Honestly at this point of time, there is nothing better than sports activities for kids as it helps them improve their stamina and somewhere a better immune system as well,” says Dwarka-based Vaibhav Khattar, who works in banking and insurance. He adds: “Children are still not going to school and there is a constant mental pressure at home, with so many online classes to attend. Of course we were worried to send her outside, initially when the Covid cases restarted to rise, but then we realised that sports in the open are pretty safe to pursue. And that’s what gave us the confidence to allow her to play, as she pursues her passion.”

Rajan Rajpal, a coach with Apex Table Tennis Academy, says while he teaches an indoor sport for which the turn out is slow at present, but that has made many book their slots in advance. “Since this Omicron variant is mild, queries didn’t take much time to pick up. In fact, people are already booking slots with us for even for February, in the anticipation that those might get filled up with the lessening impact of the virus. Like if we used to have 25-30 players playing simultaneously in one room before Covid, now we are not allowing more than seven to eight players at a time. And if the players are adults, we are also checking their vaccination status. All this also fills up the spots faster,” informs Rajpal.

And some coaches feel that overdoing isn’t the right way to go about it. “Queries have increased but there are government restrictions in place, and we feel we need to stop people from crowding the place. We cannot take too many players at the same time,” says Bhupinder Singh, a coach from Pickskills Basketball Academy, confirming that the sudden rise in requests has made them refuse quite a few bookings. “Also, the kids have become more regular as compared to earlier. And for parents, right now such physical activities have become as important as studies and they seem to be enforcing the same thought in their children as well,” he opines.

Author tweets @anjuri

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