Family Guide
Wednesday, 27 May 2009 05:05
Written by Ned Kelly

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The good news for the city’s young athletes is that most of Shanghai’s schools place a large emphasis on sport, and for those whose appetite for activity is not sated in the schoolyard or gym there are plenty of extra-curricular activities to get involved in.

There are a couple of organizations that offer a seemingly endless list of sports. First up is Sport for Life (www.sportforlife.com.cn), an expatriate sports coaching company who work closely with partner schools and clubs to deliver programs in venues across the city and coached by an international team of professional sports instructors. Their biggest three sports are tennis, swimming and soccer, which they offer every day of the week.

Particularly popular is a program called Swim for Life, a mix of swim fitness, sports and lifesaving, as is their monthly tennis tournament. Other sports offered include cricket, Aussie rules football, basketball, gymnastics, fitness, dance and camps during the holidays.

The second is Active Kidz Shanghai (or AKS, www.activekidz.org), a non-profit, volunteer organization. Like Sport for Life, it operates across the city, aiming is to provide safe, well-run activities that stimulate the development of physical and social skills, and which encourage the values of teamwork, good sportsmanship, individual creativity, self-confidence and respect for others. As well as the staple sports of soccer, baseball, basketball and flag football (in which they run leagues) and swimming and tennis, they diversify into golf, kung fu, taekwondo, field hockey, ballet, yoga, dance and even drama, drawing and painting.

 

In the Jinqiao area of Pudong, Dulwich College offers the Dulwich College Community Programmes out of the school (www.dulwich-shanghai.cn/dcp). They offer soccer, basketball, netball and rugby, and like Active Kidz also offer a range of other activities such as ballet and hip hop dance classes, choral singing and chess, as well as lessons in guitar and a number of other instruments.

When it comes to soccer the largest, best organized club in the city is QiLin F.C. (www.qilinfootball.com), which has just moved to a new expanded floodlit home at the Century Park Adidas Football Grounds. They have academies for boys in U8, U10, U12 and U14 age groups and girls in the U10 and U12 age groups, as well as programs for peewees (4-5 years old), and recreational soccer in U8, U10 and U12 age groups. They host a competitive league in which their teams are pitted against both local and rival expat sides and run camps, weekend football days and tournaments, as well as traveling abroad to compete with the best youth teams across Asia. Plans are also afoot to open an academy over the river in fall ‘09 so interested Puxi residents should keep an eye on their website.

In Pudong’s Wai Gao Qiao Sunland Eco-city you’ll find the new look home of Shanghai Rugby Football Club (www.shanghaifootballclub.com). The non-profit multi-sports club offer coaching for kids in three age groups: Xiao Crabs (age 5-8), Zhong Crabs (age 9-11) and Da Crabs (age 12-14). By the end of 2009, they will have completed the development of an 80,000sqm playing ground alongside a 4,000sqm clubhouse to be used for relaxation, dinners and parties, making it not only a sports club but a social and recreational place for families to spend the weekend. And while rugby is the only sport offered to kids at present, the club also has touch football, cricket, frisbee, Aussie rules, Gaelic football, soccer, tennis and beach volleyball facilities that it is hoping to begin coaching programs for in the near future.

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