In 2019, the District Center for Culture – Information and Sports has chosen “Professional guidance on cultural arts, sports and physical training for the Management Boards of Cultural Houses and sports area in villages and residential groups” as its key task to direct grassroots cultural and sports activities.
Wrestling competition during the Co Loa Festival on the 5th of Lunar January
To perform this task well, Dong Anh district organized 7 badminton classes in 5 days for 390 people being collaborators and management boards of Cultural Houses of the villages and residential groups in the district, provided professional guidance and practice training classes for professional volleyball and wrestling in the project of preserving traditional sports for grassroots units. The district also organized 02 summer training courses on rhythmic gymnastics and karate; organized free-swimming popularization classes for 200 pupils of grades 7 and 8 at Kim No Secondary School and Kim Chung Secondary School. At the end of the course, 193/200 students knew how to swim, reaching a rate of 96.5%. In 2019, Dong Anh sports achieved many outstanding results: Participating in 28 city-level awards and achieved 33 gold medals, 38 silver medals, 50 bronze medals, of which there was the first prize of the whole family badminton league and the second prize of the whole team of Summer Badminton Competition.
A Badminton Competition at Xuan Canh Commune – Spring 2020. (Photo by The Vinh)
There are also village festivals, holidays and Tet and sports activities organized such as Steam volleyball, badminton, and football. Officers of the district Center for Culture – Information and Sports came to the localities to provide guidance and directly participate in the evaluation boards and act as referees at sports competitions. The localities in the district have established many sports clubs such as wrestling, martial arts, volleyball, steam volleyball, badminton, football, etc., attracting a large number of people to participate. In families and residential areas, the movement of doing exercise following the great Uncle Ho’s role model also attracted a large number of people. The movement to practice physical training and sports in Dong Anh developed widely, attracting not only the people but also officials, employees, and students.
Dong Anh pupils and students practice physical exercises.
The football fields and sports grounds at the villages, the cultural houses, even in the village streets, the neighbourhood streets and so on are also crowded with people practising the sports like volleyball, basketball, badminton, ping pong, tennis, cycling, walking, skipping, etc. During the outbreak of COVID-19, the students did not go to school, but they still practised sports at home or cycled, ran, kicked shuttlecock, and played badminton or soccer after online lessons to train themselves to be more healthy. According to the leadership of the Dong Anh district’s cultural sector, to prevent infectious diseases, the district’s entertainment activities and sports tournaments have been paused for many days. However, the movement of self-training to improve health, and prevent diseases has been still voluntarily implemented by the people.
Quynh Anh