In late January 2022, on the playground of Jingwai Mingde Primary School, the worn-out football was very conspicuous. Courtesy of respondents
When the Chinese women's football team won the Asian Cup, Lei Yingfei, the principal of the rural primary school, remembered a fierce competition two years ago: the women's football team of Jingwai Mingde Primary School in Xuanwei City, Qujing, Yunnan Province, after being scored 5 goals by the women's football team of Huake Primary School in Qilin District, the team members scored three goals in a row, and finally narrowly defeated Huake Primary School with a one-goal advantage.
Jingwai Mingde Primary School is located in a small basin known as "Bazi" by locals, and there are more than 400 left-behind children among the more than 800 students in the school. But every student in the school has their own soccer ball with their name on it.
The women's soccer team has won the Qujing City Championship for two consecutive years, and they even went to Kunming to take photos with well-known athletes Wang Shuang and Wang Shanshan. They are the "wind-chasing girls" on campus and the "god-like beings" in the outside population. Despite this, the coach of Jingwai Mingde Primary School still has a little uneasiness, these girls who love football incomparably, once they leave the "shelter" of the unique football atmosphere of their alma mater, many of them, and the fate of football is difficult to continue.
In August 2020, in Kunming, Yunnan Province, Lei Yingfei and other coaches took a group photo with more than a dozen women's football players and athletes such as Wang Shuang and Wang Shanshan. Courtesy of respondents
Football is round, anything can happen
Xuanwei City is a county-level city that withdrew from the list of poverty-stricken counties in May 2020, and the most famous in the city is ham, which is located at the junction of Yunnan and Guizhou, on the slope of the transition from the Yunnan Plateau to the Guizhou Plateau. Perhaps related to geographical, economic and other factors, the football atmosphere here is not strong.
"There are more than 300 primary schools in Xuanwei, but at present, only our schools carry out a certain scale of campus football training." Lei Yingfei, the principal of Jingwai Mingde Primary School, who was born in 1981, was a little worried, "In our place, we don't pay enough attention to football. ”
Lian Lei Yingfei himself, the first time he met football, was at the 2002 Korea-Japan World Cup. That year, the Chinese men's national football team qualified for the first time to enter the final round, and the young people of the whole country jumped. But Ronaldo, who scored 8 goals alone, became the player who had the most profound impact on Lei Yingfei.
To understand football, children must first have a football field, a group of football coaches. In 2014, Qian Guowan, a mathematics teacher, became the first football coach because he majored in physical education in college, teaching teachers how to play football first, and then teaching them to children. Principal Lei Yingfei also has to follow suit, and he is also the fourth-grade women's football coach.
The site used in the beginning was a sand-covered open space next to the school. "Yes, you can't let them kick on the cement floor, it's not good for the knee." Qian Guowan knows that sports venues must be flexible, so that they can have a shock absorption and buffering effect.
In January 2022, the children trained daily. Courtesy of respondents
Recalling the first time he competed outside of school, Qian Guowan laughed, "The girls kicked a lot." Both the coach and the players are too inexperienced. I remember the coach sweating profusely off the field and the kids on the pitch with their faces glazed over and not knowing what to do. ”
Li Fenglan, who is in the first grade of junior high school, is the former women's football captain of Jingwai Mingde Primary School and one of the most impressive students of the coaches. "She's technically skilled, talented, and her kicking moves are standard and agile. She likes to carry the ball with her right foot, arch her waist, stretch her body forward, and when she gets to the goal, she takes a slight eye at the goal and shoots with her feet, which is a 'tomboy'. Lei Yingfei couldn't help but laugh when he talked about his "female general chasing the wind".
Li Fenglan is not the same as other girls, her thoughts about football in elementary school, far from being an interest or extracurricular activity like most of her peers, she has shown her heart to visitors that her dream is to enter the national team.
When Li Fenglan was in Jingwai Mingde Primary School, he was a "football star" in the school. She once led the team to stage a "earth-shattering reversal", after being scored by the other side for 5 goals, she finally defeated Huake Primary School in Qilin District, which had won the overall championship of Yunnan Province, with a score of 6-5. She was personally awarded "Outstanding Athlete".
But before the team won the championship in 2020, it stopped at the third place for two consecutive years. At one point they had reached the semi-finals, and the championship trophy was just around the corner. But because of a referee's "misjudgment", the girls looked at each other on the scene and began to wonder, panic and impatience. "People who play with emotions will definitely lose the game." Qian Guowan said.
Qian Guowan often hangs a sentence on his lips, football is round, and anything can happen. "Our original intention in football is to let children understand the sport, exercise and strengthen willpower. Winning or losing is less important. He said.
Fun-loving principal Girl who loves to fight
Lei Yingfei was the principal of Jingwai Mingde Primary School at the age of 27, which had just been formed by five rural primary schools. Before that, Lei Yingfei taught mathematics at a primary school in Xuanwei City, and a very important reason why he chose to teach in the countryside was that he "loved to play".
"I love to play, the day before the middle school entrance examination, I was still playing glass balls with my friends in the village." Lei Yingfei will cite himself as evidence when defending "playing", even if I love to play so much, the middle school entrance examination is still the first place in Xuanwei, "Children play football, will not let the learning regress." ”
The "Happy Farm", which serves three meals a day for all teachers and students, is also Lei Yingfei's masterpiece. Since 2008, Lei Yingfei began to lead teachers to contract land, and with the help of the government, it has been continuously expanded. In the past 10 years, the farm has grown cabbage, melon, spinach, etc., and also raised pigs, chickens, fish and so on. The ingredients used by teachers and students on campus are self-sufficient, and the remaining vegetables are profitable in the market and can feed back the school's sports career.
In the cornfield in late October, more than a dozen children held up ears of corn and opened their mouths to Lei Yingfei's camera. The girls in the photo are on average taller than the boys. Lei Yingfei notes on the photo: Large true incense scene, hiking eight kilometers back and forth, harvesting corn, cooking by yourself.
In late October 2021, Lei Yingfei took the children to harvest corn for eight kilometers round trip. Courtesy of respondents
The three words that Lei Yingfei often mentions are: physical fitness, fighting spirit, and will quality. "Why is the Chinese women's football team good-looking, because they have good physical fitness, as well as fighting spirit and will quality." Lei Yingfei said that letting children go to the fields to experience farm work and teach them to practice sports is a truth, to exercise the body, but also to sharpen the quality of will.
Every morning, the morning training time is 7:20, but around 7:00, all the team members have arrived. "If they're asked to run 12 laps, they're going to have someone run 14 laps." Lei Yingfei said that in the morning, he would practice throwing balls and shooting; from 4:30 to 5:30 in the afternoon, he would also train football skills or organize confrontation matches; after dinner, from 6:30 to 7:30, it was an hour of evening training, and the coach would take them through the day's training.
In the training of the children, they are very hard and serious. Courtesy of respondents
Before the confrontation, the children will have a warm-up "trust back wrestling" game: women's soccer players wearing blue and green sportswear, two or two groups, a child falls straight behind the team member who picks her up, and the team member behind will safely catch the body of the teammate who is dumped.
At present, there are more than 100 girls playing football in the school, and there are 12 teachers in the coaching staff. Every two coaches are responsible for one grade soccer team training. International youth football convention, athletes under the age of 12 and athletes under the age of 6, are denoted by U12 and U6, respectively. "We classied fourth grade as U10 and sixth grade as U12. Qian Guowan and I are U10 coaches. Lei Yingfei is very proud of his U10, and other coaches praised the U10 as "strong and strong".
After Li Fenglan graduated in June 2021 and moved to the junior high school next door, fourth-grade striker Zhao Ziyao became a new generation of "seed players" at Jingwai Mingde Primary School. "She's very lively, the coaches call her 'little jump' because she's on the pitch, she's always jumping and jumping, and she shoots from a very sharp angle." Coach Qian Guowan said.
"Little Jump, like Li Fenglan, is an energetic athlete. When she first started playing, she was so excited as soon as she played, she could jump to the defender position for a while, change back to the forward for a while, and then jump to the goalkeeper position and block the ball for the goalkeeper. Lei Yingfei couldn't help it.
Coach Qian Guowan's most impressive player is the taciturn Cui Yaoyin. Cui Yaoyin was the goalkeeper in the "Narrow Victory over Huake Primary School in Qilin District". When he was scored 5 goals in a row by the opponent, Cui Yaoyin did not look flustered, but showed a bit of stubbornness.
When a player on the other side accidentally kicked Cui Yaoyin's head when he couldn't score the ball continuously and went straight into the penalty area, Cui Yaoyin fell to the ground. Qian Guowan picked up cui Yaoyin, who was sweating profusely, and placed him in the shade of a tree. A little, the girl opened her eyes, gritted her teeth and asked to continue playing.
In 2020, in the women's football team of Jingwai Mingde Primary School against the women's football team of Huake Primary School in Qilin District, goalkeeper Cui Yaoyin was injured, and coach Qian Guowan held her down. Courtesy of respondents
Qian Guowan reminisced about this scene of Cui Yaoyin for a long time. "Now, this child has been invited by a sports school in Qujing City to study there." Qian Guowan said that the children go to Qujing to play together and have the opportunity to go out of the mountains, and the significance of this experience may be far more than football itself.
When I grow up, I want to be you
The girls' cheeks were drenched in sweat, and their arms were clasped together like red roses clustered on a green field; the people in the audience could no longer sit still and stood up and shouted for them. Suddenly, in the close-up shot, a female athlete with short hair and a heroic face appeared, clenching her fists and gritting her teeth and shouting, and the teachers and students of Jingwai Mingde Primary School recognized it at a glance, which was Wang Shuang.
Two days later, her fourth-grade daughter, Lei Ruiqi, told Lei Yingfei that she would become a Chinese women's soccer player when she grew up, playing soccer on the green field like Wang Shuang and Wang Shanshan. Lei Yingfei was a little surprised, he heard his daughter for the first time say what she expected from her future career.
This psychological awareness of the daughter may be traced back to the Women's Premier League in August 2020. At that time, with the help of a well-known foundation supporting the rural campus women's football project in China, Lei Yingfei took more than a dozen women's football team members to kunming Haigeng Sports Training Base to watch the finals.
The Foundation prepared a huge canvas with four little girls holding soccer balls surrounding an athlete, with a line at the top that stood out: I want to be you when I grow up. In the evening, the sky in Kunming city is purple, and children take off their sneakers, sit on canvases, and press their handprints on them with dye dipped in dye.
Children press their handprints on the canvas of "I want to be you when I grow up." Courtesy of respondents
Qian Guowan will always remember the excitement and longing in the eyes of the children when they took photos with Wang Shuang, Wang Shanshan and other women's football players, and Li Fenglan, who was crouched in the first row, clasped the football tightly with the five fingers of his right hand. "Usually, when it rains, our coaches will watch the women's football game in the classroom with the children and learn the movements and tactics. Therefore, as soon as they saw Wang Shuang, they saw the people who came down on TV, and their mood was naturally excited. ”
Lei Yingfei once led the team to Qujing City to participate in the competition, and on the same day, he led the team members to watch the Chinese women's football game in the organizer canteen. In that match, the Chinese women's team lost the game 0:5. "Rainbow of Wind and Rain / Sonorous Roses / Across the Seas / The End of the World / Never Back..." became the background music for Lei Yingfei to record a video for the children. Lei Yingfei typed eight words on the video: "Chinese women's football team, never say defeat!" ”
In July 2020, Lei Yingfei brought women's football players to Qujing City to participate in the competition. Courtesy of respondents
The wind-chasing girl has a hard time getting into soccer
"As long as the training is standardized and scientific, football is not as easy to be injured as parents think." Lei Yingfei said that in the seven years since the school engaged in football, it has not encountered a situation of disability due to sports, but the children have crawled on the field and their bodies have become stronger.
In 2020, Jingwai Mingde Primary School conducted a national physical health test, and the physical fitness pass rate of students was 98%, the excellent rate was close to 60%, the obesity rate was 2%, and the myopia rate was 7%.
Li Fenglan has been in the voice of her family's resolute opposition to playing football for a long time. When she was in the fifth grade, she fell on a bicycle, causing a crushing fracture of her left hand, and although she recovered from her injury, her mother and sister, who opposed her playing football, were even more opposed.
"I went with a vice principal to do the work of Li Fenglan's parents. Advise them not to obstruct the child's interests and specialties. Li Fenglan's parents are middle school teachers and graduated from sports school, and they are slowly convinced by us. Lei Yingfei said that when Li Fenglan was not allowed to play football, the child's grades declined, and once he kicked the ball, the results were pulled back.
At the same time, Li Fenglan will find a way to "hide and kick". Li Fenglan will take advantage of her sister's absence to play with her niece, who is more than two years old, and she will carry the ball in front and let the children chase in the back. During the day at school, she would practice twice a day on the sand field.
The "will quality" of the girls also made principal Lei Yingfei feel sighing and even admiring.
Children spontaneously practice dribbling on the road every day. Courtesy of respondents
"Once, the wrist of a member of a team surnamed Tang was broken, and Tang was immediately taken from the school to the hospital for bandaging. The next morning, Tang suddenly appeared on the sports field, with bandages tied to her arms, but her face was not sad, and she practiced tossing the ball with her feet. All the teachers and students present were shocked. Lei Yingfei said.
At the end of 2020, the school replaced the sand football field with artificial turf, although the sand has the advantages of not accumulating water and not slipping, but after falling on it, the hands and knees will inevitably break the skin, "Now the flip and fall are not afraid." Qian Guowan said.
A few hundred meters away from Jingwai Mingde Primary School, it is a local junior high school. In 2021, Li Fenglan graduated this class, and many children entered this middle school to continue their studies. But the new school, no soccer lessons, no sisters playing soccer together, only soccer fields.
"As soon as children go to middle school, they don't have access to football." Lei Yingfei said that because football is not included in the entrance examination, the secondary school physical education class will not carry out football training. In addition, the pressure of schoolwork is also the reason why children have to put down football.
Li Fenglan has never played a game in his new school, and even when Lei Yingfei took the initiative to invite Li Fenglan to participate in the football winter camp of Jingwai Mingde Primary School, Li Fenglan told Lei Yingfei that he had no time to play football now.
Another set of figures also makes Lei Yingfei feel grim: in 2021, there were 104 first-year students; in 2020, it was 113; in 2019, it was more than 130; and more than a decade ago, there were nearly 200 first-year enrollments.
"The reason for this is the 'card school' document. In order to protect the source of rural junior high school students, the relevant departments issued documents not to allow students to transfer schools, so that parents will start from the first grade, let their children go to the city to study primary school, just for the city primary school after graduation assigned to the city's good middle school, if not, it will be difficult for children to enter a good high school from the township junior high school. Lei Yingfei, who was elected as a member of the Xuanwei Municipal Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference in January this year, proposed that the relevant departments eliminate the "card school" document and popularize football training in secondary schools.
For some girls in Jingwai Mingde Primary School, the fate with sports is like a undulating Lancang River, in the first six years of primary school, they were vigorous and extraordinary on the court; but in the six years of middle school, they hid the "name of the past generations" in their hearts and did not make a sound, and it was difficult to attract the attention of the people around them with exercise; until they walked into the university campus, they released the energy in their veins to the fullest, like an invincible river.
"We have a graduate, last year was admitted to the university, after returning to her alma mater, she was very excited to tell us that she is now playing basketball in the university, the classmates around her are very envious, she will no longer feel timid and shy because she is facing a baby in the city, but on the campus of the university, sunny and confident, unlimited youth." Qian Guowan said.
Qian Guowan is a person who likes to "look forward", he does not remember how many awards women's football teams have won in the past time, "the past things, it has passed." Qian Guowan said that most of them may not be engaged in the football industry, and even after graduating from primary school, there are not many who pick up football again, but teaching them football and taking them to watch the Chinese women's football game is to plant a seed for them, and the story of football may sprout and grow, but the story about hard work and the quality of will will will always remain in their hearts.
In almost every game of the Chinese women's football team, Lei Yingfei will share the experience of the game in the circle of friends, and will also send the live broadcast link to the parent group to suggest to the parents that the children watch the game. "Whether you play football or not, I hope that the children will always maintain good health and good will quality after leaving their alma mater."
Kunming, is a city that many girls have only heard of but have never been to, Lei Yingfei repeatedly mentioned that the opportunity to go outside to compete, the significance of itself is more than the ranking of the competition itself, recalling the scene where the little girls and Wang Shuang took a group photo in Kunming, "Maybe they will really have someone to become Wang Shuang in the future." Lei Yingfei said, "But even if you don't become Wang Shuang, it doesn't matter." ”
(Yang Yijing is also helpful for this article)
Beijing News reporter Zhao Lixin
Edited by Tang Zheng Proofreader Liu Jun