Rainy Season in the north-eastern corner of Thailand is a special time of the year. Suddenly nature springs to life, and transforms the landscape from hot, dry and dusty environment, to a wet, muddy and lush scenery. This backdrop is the setting for the another magical event, The PlayOnside Rainy Season Tournament.
In 2016 we arranged the tournament for the first time with 17 teams from 7 different migrant learning centers – and it was a great success. This year it was even more spectacular with more than 3 times as many participants.
It it great that we are capable of increasing our impact and reach out to more children, but growth is not necessarily a goal in itself. The most important is the we are capable of maintain a high quality of the program.
With many new teams from new school whom had never played football before, we used the weeks leading up to the tournament to arrange different friendly games for the children to get used to the format and the tournament.
This was a very successful approach, as the friendly games bring fun but less competitive atmosphere to the field.
The tournament started in July and finished with a spectacular closing ceremony at the municipality Stadium in Mae Sot, at the end of September.
Big events like this present logistical challenges for a small organization like ours, and as we only have two football fields at our disposal, it is a puzzle to arrange game schedules and driving schedules for the weekends. As the schools are spread out over a vast geographical area, we have to provide transportation to most of the schools, taking a big chunk of the PlayOnside budget.
It is also a challenge to get the schools to commit for long-term and to be able to participate every weekend, so for PlayOnside it is important to be flexible and to adjust according to the schools schedules.
For PlayOnside, it is not very important who wins the tournament. However, this is very important for the schools and for the players. Some are more competitive than others, so it is imperative for PlayOnside to always play down the importance of winning, and also give a lot of recognition to teams and children that try their best, and are also excelling in areas like fair play and respect.
All in all, the tournament was a great success, and we are already looking forward to a wet and muddy affair in 2018.
