A journey from county's school playground to country's National Games venue

XI'AN, May 26 (Xinhua) -- How far is the journey from a county's school playground to the country's National Games venue?

For others, it could be a lifetime achievement. But for 12 kids from Yanji Elementary School in Northwest China's Qianyang County, it took just a single day.

Days before Children's Day, a charity organization in Baoji, Shaanxi province invited the children from Yanji to receive training from professional coaches in the city and helped the "left-behind" children fight loneliness as well as make friends through sports.

Liu Haoning, a fourth-grade pupil from Yanji School, named after one of the 72 saints nurtured by Confucius, has been playing soccer for over two years. Liu cheered up and unleashed a strike to the sky once he stepped on the natural grass pitch of Baoji Stadium.

"This is the first time I play soccer in such a big venue and I can't quite believe it," he said, adding that he wanted to take a nap on the pitch.

According to Bai Ruibo, a soccer coach as well as an English teacher at Yanji School, nearly one-third of students at the school are "left-behind" children whose parents work away from their hometowns with the purpose of earning enough money to support their families.

"We have attached great importance to the development of soccer since the school was founded in 2017. Each team from the third grade to the sixth grade has to play at least ten regular matches in a semester," Bai said.

Zhang Lei, one of the directors at the Baoji Hand-in-hand Football Commonweal Promotion Center, told Xinhua that the organization has held two charity events, in 2017 and 2019, with Yanji School.

"A total of 80 students attended the event we organized two years ago," he said, adding that at the camp they invited children to train soccer and take them to a space museum and cultural center in Baoji.

"And this time we focus on the training at the stadium because of the National Games that will be held in Shaanxi Province," he added.

As one of the oldest venues to host the National Games competitions, the 28,000-seats Baoji Stadium that was built at the end of the 20th century will hold the soccer event at the quadrennial multi-sports meeting.

Wu Jian, a retired professional footballer and a Baoji local, has been playing soccer on the pitch for over twenty years. As a coach at Baoji Koori Star Youth Football Club, he taught Yanji pupils soccer skills and tactics and led them in practice on that day.

Moreover, Wu arranged a friendly between club trainees in Baoji and the Yanji School students.

"The kids from Yanji lost the game but they impressed me a lot," Wu said after the match.

"The students are hardworking and have great potential to develop," he said, hoping that more professionals could take part in grassroots football training for youth in rural areas.

According to Bai, all the kids from Qianyang cherished the exchange very much because they don't usually have many chances to communicate with the outside world.

"For me as a coach, I cherished the chance too, and I know the coaches' gap between urban and rural areas is even bigger than students'," he said.

After a whole day of training, Liu and his teammates received gifts from the charity organization - a pair of soccer socks and gloves.

"But the experience of playing in the venue and the lessons we learned today are bigger Children's Day gifts for us," Liu concluded.