KARACHI: The Sindh Tennis Players Association (STPA) has come forward with a novel idea of grooming underprivileged youth, mainly ball boys, on a long-term basis.

Presently, a group of 11 budding players, all serving as ball boys in local clubs, are being groomed by coaches who have been specially hired for the purpose, a visit by this correspondent to the DHA Creek Club revealed.

The significant thing of the camp is that nutrition aspect of the trainees is taken care of and they are regularly provided with a banana and milk/juice. This is in addition to free pick and drop facility and free provision of sports gears.

“The camp has been designed to bring youth under tennis umbrella,” Reza Ali Mirza, the founding STPA president, told Dawn. Secretary of the body, Imran Ahmed Siddique, was also present on the occasion.

Founded in 2011, STPA has been registered under Societies Act recently and aims high to promote the game at the grassroots level.

“We’re paying monthly rent to the Creek Club for running the underprivileged camp from 2pm to 4pm on five days a week at two courts,” says 45-year-old Reza, who has a passion for sports particularly tennis.

Reza, junior No 1 of the country in 1986 whose tennis career was cut short due to back injury in 1991, runs SuperKids – a company that caters to multi-sports to various school children.

Obviously, the whole exercise of underprivileged camp can not be possible without the support of sponsors — Atlas Honda and Khadija Foundation — with whom we’ve inked a one-year deal starting April 1 this year, he says.

Then there are two paid coaches — Zulfiqar Ali Khan who has returned from Jeddah and M. Naveed Khan — who groom and monitors the performance of players. The youngest trainee is nine while the eldest is 15 years.

The underprivileged trainees:

Parbhat Kanchi, Ashish Kanchi (brothers), Jay Kumar, Mujahidullah, M. Yameen, M. Yayha, Hammad, Kailash, Nabeel, Ajay Chohan, and Basharat Shaukat.

Published in Dawn, July 17th, 2014