HANGZHOU, July 13 (Xinhua) -- If you were a parent, what would you do if your child's rugby team had to be disbanded due to bankruptcy? A group of parents in the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou made their own choices.
Fan Yelin decided to send his kindergarten-age son to learn rugby after he took part in a free rugby class in 2018. In his opinion, it was the best way for children to learn about teamwork and to deal with frustration.
All 13 trainees formed a team in the training institution. Fan's son's team was named the "Four-Leaf Clover," and the whole team had been training together, from learning basic rugby skills to playing a simple rugby game.
The four-leaf clover is said to bring good fortune, but this time the team's luck ran out.
Fan paid tuition fees for a whole year before the Chinese New Year this year as usual. He was waiting joyfully for training to restart after the COVID-19 pandemic had been brought under control but soon learned that the training institution had gone bankrupt.
"Though the training institution was bankrupt, we could still run it by ourselves," thought 10 of the 13 parents, who reached an agreement after lengthy discussions.
They invited the coaches who had been training the team to come back to work again. Without a professional rugby training ground, they settled for a football pitch instead.
Through the parents' efforts, the children got their rugby training back and have been training regularly for the last two months, approximately once a week.
The "Four-Leaf Clover" team was back.
As for the children, little has changed except for the training ground. With familiar teachers and teammates, they didn't even notice the original training facility had gone.
"When my son grows up, I may let him know what kind of efforts we made to keep their rugby team going," Fan smiled.
Huang Chongwei, 25, from Wenzhou, about three hours from Hangzhou by train, has been coaching Four-Leaf Clover since his graduation.
Since the training facility's bankruptcy, his employers had not so much as returned the tuition fees, let alone paid the coaches' salaries.
When the parents invited Huang to continue his work as a coach, he was deeply moved.
"They didn't blame me for the failure of our institution but asked me back to work for them. This kind of trust is rare," Huang said.
During the training, Huang allows parents to participate in parts of the sessions. He believes it's a good chance for parents to communicate with their children, especially for fathers.
"I hope they can improve their father-and-son relationship along the way," Huang added.
With the children's rugby skills improving day by day, Fan hopes that more people who are interested in rugby can join them.
"If we can build another team, we can organize rugby games and form competitions by ourselves, and the content of the training can be richer and more diversified." Enditem
