Sports Day (British English &Canadian English),field days (American English), orplay days (Canadian English) are events staged by manyschools andoffices in which people participate in competitivesporting activities, often with the aim of winningtrophies orprizes. Though they are often held at the beginning of summer, they are also staged in the autumn or spring seasons, especially in countries where the summer is very harsh. Schools stage many sports days in which children participate in the sporting events. It is usually held in elementary schools.
In schools which use ahouse system a feature of the school is the competition between the houses; this is especially brought out during sporting events such as an inter-house sports day.
Games that are played on school sports days can be wide and varied. They can include straightforward sprints and longer races for all age groups as well asegg and spoon races.Three-legged races are run as well assack races,wheelbarrow races, and parent and child races. Long jumps and high jumps are also held. Additional games are traditionally run in Ireland, and the UK, such ashorseshoes.
In India, sports days are held for 2–3 days. These include games likefootball,cricket,throw ball,dodge ball,volleyball,track and field,basketball etc. These sports days are held between the various houses in a particular school. In India, manytraditional games such askho-kho,kabaddi and march-past are played.
Sports day, calledundōkai (運動会) in Japanese, is usually held on a Saturday or Sunday inJapanese schools. During weeks preceding the sports day, students practice their events which they would like to show their parents and friends, within their class of physical education, which often includestamaire, performances by the school band and presentations by various school clubs as well as individual and group competitive events. These practices, and the sports days themselves, normally take place on the schools' fields, which provide little relief from the heat and sun.[citation needed]
Some schools have responded by scheduling their sports days during cooler months and by encouraging their students to drink water regularly. Currently, the event occurs most often in the autumn (September/October), or in the spring (May/June). Inelementary schools inHokkaidō, the event is usually held between the later part of May and the earlier part of June.[1]
Sport is a significant part ofPakistani culture.Cricket is the most popular sport, whilefield hockey,polo, andsquash are also popular.[2] Many well funded private and government schools hold a Sports Day, when track and field events like running, relay races, high jump, long jump, discus and shot-put are held. These sports are generally played in front of an audience of parents who witness the Sports day events. If the children are divided by house in the school's system, then the various houses also compete against each other for enough points and medals to win that Sports day's events.
Traditional sports likekabaddi and other well-known games are also played. ThePakistan Sports Board was created in 1962 by theMinistry of Education as a corporate body for the purposes of promoting and developing uniform standards of competition in sports in Pakistan comparable to the standards prevailing internationally, and regulating and controlling sports in Pakistan on a national basis. TheMinistry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, now has control over thePakistan Sports Board. The PSB controls all 39 sporting federations. The Pakistan Sports Board is supported by the Pakistan Sports Trust, which assists hard up players and associations so they can continue participating in sports.
Over recent years there has been an increase in sporting activity in Pakistan, with Pakistani sportsmen and women participating at many national and international events. Also, more international tournaments now take place in Pakistan. The size of the teams Pakistan sends, and the number of events they participate in, such as theOlympic Games,Asian Games,World Games, andCommonwealth Games has increased since the turn of the century.
Sports Day inRussia is held on the second Saturday in August.
Sports day is a national holiday, held every second-Tuesday of February every year.[3] TheOlympic Committee is tasked with organizing the large-scale nationwide activities that are held all over Qatar, and include a wide variety of sports such as; football, basketball, tennis, marathons, open walks, as well as regional sports such as camel riding. Other venues of sports day includeAspire Zone, Katara,The Pearl, among others. Sports day's popularity extends to the point thatSheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani, Qatar's Emir is casually seen participating in events.
Many large organizations have sports days for their employees. One notable example isHis Majesty's Civil Service in the UK, which holds a number of departmental sports days.
There have been a number of controversies surrounding school sports days in recent years, many of which have been publicised by the media.
Some schools have abolished or heavily altered sports days on the grounds that they are too competitive and may damage pupils'self-esteem, with some commentators calling for the event to be banned due to thepublic humiliation caused to those children who are not gifted athletically.[4] This view has been condemned as "political correctness" by many commentators, notably by journalistMelanie Phillips in her 1996 bookAll Must Have Prizes, a book heavily criticised by reviewers for its alleged prejudiced, fact-less and distorted analyses.[5]
In June 2005,Country Life magazine published a report claiming that school sports days have become excessively competitive due to overbearing and "over-zealous" parents, who place too much pressure on their children to succeed. The report also revealed that many schools have banned "mothers and fathers" races due to fighting and cheating.
Since the mid-1990s, a number of schools and education authorities have banned photography and filming withvideo cameras at sports days and other school events. Some authorities cite general privacy issues as justification for the ban. Others have raised concerns aboutpedophiles, which in turn has sparked accusations of hysteria andmoral panic. Many parents have expressed anger at being unable to take photographs or videos as souvenirs of these events, and the ban has been criticised by some as aparanoid over-reaction to public concerns about pedophilia and child safety issues.
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