With BOSM around the corner, the BOSM English Press sat down with the Sports Secretary, Nachiket Garg, to understand what it takes to execute a fest of this scale. Nachiket explained that the Sports Union mainly conducted four events, namely the BITS Premier League (BPL), InterBITS, Inter-Hostel, and the Union’s flagship event—BOSM.
Right off the bat, he noted that while registrations had crossed the 2000 mark, they had to be manually cut down due to accommodation constraints on campus. This time, after a nearly thirteen-year hiatus, Baxter, the official mascot of BOSM, was set to make a comeback. Nachiket aimed to publicise Baxter as much as possible by making him visible across campus and during every marquee event during the fest. Additionally, a pickleball tournament was also set to be held on the newly inaugurated pickleball courts in the hopes of establishing a team in the near future. This time, he said, the scale of the concert would also be larger, with Salim-Sulaiman officially confirmed as the headliners for the show.
In a more personal capacity, Nachiket said that although he was part of both the carrom and table tennis teams, his duties as Sports Secretary had rendered him unable to attend practice sessions with either team. On whether or not he would be competing, he said that he would, only if there was space on the team and would not try to force his way into the squad. Addressing the issue of uneven distribution of outstation teams across sports at BOSM last year, he remarked that it ultimately boiled down to the overall popularity of the sport at the national level. However, he agreed that more efforts had been made this time, through various channels such as coaches and team captains, to build contact lists for each sport, and they were used to invite specific teams to the fest.
Nachiket said his experience with the CoSSAc and Sports Union Council (SUC) had been brilliant thus far. Being a fifth-year student, he had his reservations about working with his juniors from multiple batches after him; however, events such as BPL helped him build a stronger connection with them. He added that this time, most sports teams had updated their rulebooks. This was important as, according to him, outstation teams tried to exploit caveats in the rules, which created problems.
Rehashing last year’s BOSM, Nachiket acknowledged that the BOSM Review Meet (BRM) had not happened owing to friction between the Sports Financial Committee (SFC) and the Sports Council (SC), which was ‘a little sad (sic).’ He believed that friction could only arise if the SFC tried to ‘overstate their stature’ by trying to interfere with the work of council members or CoSSAcns. He confessed that he had unfortunately had to partake in multiple difficult conversations with the SFC over the last two weeks. He added that the SFC was fundamentally supposed to be an ‘auditing body’ and that they should not impose their opinions on decisions made by the CoSSAc.
Finally, talking about which events he was most excited about, he said that he was extremely excited about Baxter roaming around on campus along with paintball and ‘Soapy Football.’ Alongside that, he added that a Rotunda Rave and Auditorium Show were in the works since the rave received such an incredible response at the Freshers’ Fest. He concluded by saying that he wanted the scope of BOSM to expand well beyond just the sports teams to every single member of the GBM. He urged everyone to participate in as many of the events as possible and treat sport as a stress-buster.