Eye On The Ball
Coaching championship women’s soccer in the U.S. prepared Kalekeni Banda to seek a big win for boys and girls in rural Malawi. “We are using sports to raise awareness of the importance of education,” says Mr. Banda, founder of the Banda Bola Sports Foundation.
Twice named National Soccer Coaches Association of America (NSCAA) Coach of the Year, Mr. Banda has deep roots at Malenga Mzoma Primary School in the Malawi village of Chituka, where he learned how to play soccer. “In my in village few people know the importance of education and how it can impact lives,” says Mr. Banda. “We go back home and talk to local leadership — parents chiefs, educators, teachers. We try to figure out the best way for children to educated.”
Because his father was a national leader when Malawi won independence from Great Britain in 1964, Mr. Banda grew up with a global perspective. He went to high school near New York City where his father represented Malawi at the United Nations. A soccer and track scholarship brought Mr. Banda to the University of Massachusetts at Amherst (UMass). He earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Physical Education then headed home to coach Malawi Olympic teams for three years.
Coaching offers lured him back to the U.S. At UMass, the University of Wisconsin and the University of Albany, he developed a soccer training philosophy called Banda Bola, which means “dancing with the ball.” A long list of awards and a winning record in men and women’s soccer over two decades validated the method. He coached the University of Massachusetts Minutewomen to five NCAA final four appearances including the 1987 championship match. Twenty-five of his women players became All Americans and one was tapped to join the U.S. National Team.
Coach Banda returned to Malawi in December 2007 to launch a scholastic soccer league under the banner of the Banda Bola Sports Foundation. The Chituka Village Project supports rigorous soccer programs for boys and girls in the Nikhita Bay South District in northern Malawi.
“We’re changing people’s mindsets and breaking barriers,” Mr. Banda recently told the men’s and women’s soccer teams at UMass, the Daily Hampshire Gazette reported. Boys play soccer almost from the time they can walk but girls are more tentative. Competing in soccer improves their confidence in every respect. For boys and girls, the catch is that to play ball they must attend school five days a week and earn good grades.
Primary school is usually a hard sell where one teacher may have upwards of 80 students in a single class and resources are scarce. But introduce soccer and many children need less convincing to stay in school than parents who see formal education as a diversion from chores around the home, especially for girls. “Parents prefer that their kids help with siblings, get firewood, water or cook,” says Coach Banda. As soon as girls can bear children, he adds, parents marry them off. Many drop out before they are literate.
“Soccer dangles a carrot in front of them,” says Coach Banda. His program aims to keep boys and girls in school through eighth grade. Below age 10, teams are co-ed. Above that level, in a bid for gender equity that echoes Title IX in the U.S., schools can field a boys’ soccer team only if they also field a girls’ team.
These days Banda Bola runs programs at 35 schools in Malawi. Playing fields are classrooms. Coaching in English reinforces language abilities that are crucial to reading and studying. “To do well on exams they need to know English,” says Coach Banda. Many students remain in school but those who don’t at least acquire basic math and reading skills that can furnish an exit from poverty.
Although soccer is his first love, Coach Banda never takes his eye off of the ball that matters to every youngster in rural Malawi. “Basic education,” he says, “that’s what we are trying to do.”
