Coach Lin Wei-chih (林衛志) has high hopes for the girls' soccer team at Hualien County's Tungli Elementary School. So after winning third place at the National Youth Soccer Championship, hosted by the Chinese Taipei Football Association, Lin wanted the team to compete at an international level.
"We are a small school with only 70 students, a majority of whom are Aborigines. If they don't expand their horizons they will never improve," Lin told the Taipei Times.
The team intended to participate in this year's Aloha International Cup, scheduled to be held next month in Honolulu. However, besides jerseys and shin guards, the team lacks money.
With the tournament approaching rapidly, the school decided to appeal for public donations rather than waiting for funds handed out by the Hualien County Government or the Ministry of Education.
Tungli is not the only elementary school that has had problems funding teams for overseas sports events.
The soccer team from Tong An Elementary School in Taoyuan, for example, would have been unable to take part in a tournament in Austria last year if it wasn't for donations from the private sector.
The baseball team at Tainan's Chung Syue Elementary, the alma mater of New York Yankees star Wang Chien-ming (王建民), also experienced funding problems last year. Although they won the Asian qualifiers for the PONY Baseball League, the team still had to raise funds for their trip.
And just last month, Hsichih Elementary School in Taipei called for urgent financial support for its baseball team, which is also planning to compete in the PONY Baseball League this year.
Another recent example is the girl's softball team at Wutang Elementary School in Pingtung, which has been invited to take part in an international softball competition in Guangzhou in August. Like Tungli, Wutang is a small school with only 66 students, most of them members of the Paiwan tribe.
Eventually, members on the softball team decided to sell hand-made cookies after school to raise their travel funds.
The funding issue facing these primary school sports teams has come into the spotlight after Jump! Boys, (翻滾吧!男孩), a documentary detailing the rigorous training regime of the gymnastics team at Ilan County's Gong Jheng Elementary School, won international accolade.
It begs the question of whether the government organizations involved have actively provided subsidies to school teams in need.
Lai Ching-ting (賴靜婷), a representative of the Executive Yuan's Sports Affairs Council, told the Taipei Times that policy requires the government to subsidize only teams that have secured first or second place in national tournaments organized by the nation's major sports associations. In addition, the international competitions they plan to take part in must be recognized and approved by the council before a team can receive any subsidies.
"In Tungli's case, the school did not qualify for the subsidy because it only finished in third place," Lai said.
The ministry's physical education department is also tasked with providing financial support for schools planning to compete abroad.
Chiang Yi-hsuen (江羿萱), a specialist at the physical education department, said that the competition in which Tungli had finished third was in any case not organized by the ministry.
"We have limited funds, but the need is great," she said, "It is impossible for us to help every team. We need to lay out rules of the competition first. Otherwise everyone wants a share of the pie."
Chiang noted that the department had exceeded its allocated budget for the first half of this year, with only a little over NT$2 million (US$60,606) left to be used.
Mo Cheng (牟澄), secretary-general of the Chinese Taipei Amateur Softball Association, said that his association did everything it could to help primary schools take part in competitions overseas. He emphasized, however, that some tournaments were simply not very significant. According to Chen, participation in these should be considered optional.
Richard Lin (林宗成), executive secretary of the Chinese Taipei Baseball Association, said a convention had been established with baseball organizations that subsidies would first go to games organized by the so-called "orthodox" international baseball associations. That said, participants in Little League Baseball in the US, for example, would not be prioritized.
Richard Lin said that even for teams which do get funding, the subsidy only covers about two-thirds of expenses. Each team had to figure out ways to raise the rest of the money, he said.
Given that the government budget for sports teams is always insufficient, some have suggested that schools should actively court corporate sponsors.
Richard Lin said that such donors had their own considerations whenever they chose to support a team. For example, because of the popularity of Wang Chien-ming, the association was able to secure a three-year contract from E. Sun Bank to support the development of adult baseball. Ford Motor Co, on the other hand, is keen to sponsor youth baseball.
Lin Wei-chih said they his soccer team had been unable to gain corporate sponsorship due to their lackluster performance in the past.
Despite the legal restrictions, the government is considering increasing its funding for school sports teams in different ways.
"The law may be amended so that schools are partially compensated for their training expenses," Chiang said.
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