The BOSM English Press sat down with Dhruv Singh Malik, captain of the Boys’ Athletics Team, to gain insight into how his team was preparing for the upcoming fest. An upbeat Dhruv began by sharing the fact that the team was in great shape this time around.
He explained that this year, training began two weeks earlier than usual, which gave the team more room to conduct trials and simultaneously get in shape for the season. He was also proud of the fact that individual events for each athlete had been finalised two weeks prior to BOSM, which left plenty of time for last minute fine-tuning. Addressing the fact that the Athletics Team was one of the largest on campus, due to the sheer number of events in the sport, he emphasised the need for fairness in allocating events to his team members. He shared that an internal selection process was conducted among members of his team to decide which athlete would participate in which event. The top three from each category were selected to represent the team with ‘senior quota,’ which meant giving preference to seniors not being employed.
Elaborating on the events being conducted, he split them into two categories—track and field. Track comprised sprints (100m, 200m and 400m), middle distance (800m, 1500m, 3000m), and long distance (5000m), while the field events consisted of long jump, high jump, triple jump, shot put and javelin.
This year’s recruits, he said, had benefited from training having started earlier than usual and looked promising. The large number of probationers were whittled down to ten boys and five girls, who were finally chosen to join the team. Apart from leading the team on the field, Dhruv shared that one of his responsibilities was also guiding his athletes through any injuries or niggles they picked up during training and making sure that it doesn’t significantly affect their performance. While he is making strides of progress himself, this semester, he believes that everyone’s progress is also in part his responsibility.
On his interactions with the CoSSAc and SUC, he said that they had been minimal but productive and that it had been a pleasure working with them. One of the major issues that the Athletics Team faced last year was a low number of outstation participants. On this, Dhruv said that he had made significant efforts on his end by aggregating and forwarding various leads and contacts of teams to the Department of Publications and Correspondence (PCr). While he hoped that this would bring change, he ultimately conceded that it was up to PCr to deal them good cards.
He mentioned that besides athletics, he particularly enjoyed watching football and powerlifting during BOSM. In his concluding message, he urged the GBM to step out and support their friends and said that every team—not just Athletics—had worked hard for this edition of the fest and would love to have their support.