Delhi Chapter of OTHL: Fifth Anniversary celebrations and highlights.
Delhi chapter of One Thousand Hockey Legs was commenced two years after the innovative project was put in operation in other four centres in India: Kolkata, Chennai, Puducherry & Kanpur.
Delhi, however, showed tremendous interest and the concept of introducing and running hockey teams in schools — where hockey was not played before — spread like a wildfire and established itself as the most dynamic and vibrant of all 5 OTHL centres today.
About 900 boys gathered at Shivaji stadium last week end and celebrated the 5th anniversary with their coaches, mentors and volunteers. It was a joy with each one of them engaging in various activities they like, from serious games to lighter stuff.
During the event, costly items sent by Dutch legend Jaap Stockmann were also distributed to the needy ones.
Former OTHL Stars played a friendly match against present OTHL XI, which ended in an exciting draw.
The coaches were presented momento.
The boys thanked Hockey India which gave HI President’s Outstanding Achievement Award to OTHL this year, and before that affiliation to the NGO so that it can participate directly in the Sub-Jr National Championships.
Founder and CEO K. Arumugam assured formation of different package for the coming years so that the talent pool of gifted boys are elevated to next level.
Delhi OTHL highlights
Introduced 24 Schools, 90% govt
Free Equipment, free coaching for all these schools
Hockey is now institutionally played in five New Education Deptt Zones.
The boys were given at least Six tournament exposure annually.
OTHL introduced three New Entities (tournaments): Cairn Juniors Hockey Cup, Birendranath Ghosh Memorail Cup and Prof Joe Ezekiel Memorial Cup.
It exported Talent to needy private Schools / Clubs, selflessly.
Education Deptt: Inter-Zone: Our OTHL centre boys won Silver in the U-14 in 2014, silver in U-14 and U-17 this year.
School Games: About six boys got selected for Delhi State in the SGFI School Games National Championship.
About half a dozen boys represented Delhi State in the Hockey India age group National Championships.
In order to sustain the momentum in long term, OTHL encouraged schools to organize inter-school invitational tournaments. So far, five such properties have been established. Anglo-Arabic Inter-School Hockey Cup 2015 was the first one, the event was held last week.
Delhi OTHL contributed maximum in terms of players for the Citizen Hockey XI team which participated in the Baroda and Jammu editions of HI Sub-Junior National Championships.