(BSS)- Bangladesh national women’s kabaddi team’s coach Shahnaz Parvin Maleka has said the Festival of Youth should continue to get its long-term overall benefit in sports, especially in kabaddi.

Talking to BSS, the former national kabaddi player informed that fifty talented girls have been selected from the Festival of Youth 2025 and they need long-term training to make them prepare to take the country’s kabaddi forward.

“Long-term training is essential for our players to take the kababddi ahead. You know our kabaddi team has limited players. If the selected players from the Festival of Youth are given long-term training, a good national team can be formed in the future,” said the coach who was a part of the Bangladesh women’s kabaddi team that won the bronze medal at the 2010 Asian Games.

She said it was notable step taken by the interim government to introduce Festival of Youth for the first time in the country and she hoped that if the Festival of Youth continues, talented athletes would come out in future.

The kabaddi coach said the women’s kabaddi team don’t’ get proper training facility and cannot make proper physical activities. As the federation has also limited budget, so the girls don’t get good quality of training and deprived of playing practice matches abroad.

Usually, a team plays practice matches with foreign team before taking part any international tournament abroad but our players don’t get such scope to assess their capability before any big tournament.

Maleka said Bangladesh women’s kabaddi brought many laurels for the country in the past, so to ensure adequate facility in kabaddi the former national player thinks that the government can play an important role to keep this consistency.

The government, for the first time, introduced Festival of Youth 2025 this year. According to the Youth and Sports ministry, at least 2.74 million women and young girls took part in 2,931 sports events and cultural activities across the country.

Of the total, at least 855 were football matches and these games were held in some of the remotest parts of the country. For the first time in the history of Bangladesh so many women have taken part in such a huge number of sports events.