Vir Shrinagesh, a national athlete and student of Pathways School in Gurgaon, had just launched EduKick Naari—a non-profit initiative offering guidance on how girls can avail of sports quotas to pursue their higher education. At one of EduKick Naari’s first workshops in Delhi’s Sangham Vihar, a girl—who was a state-level athlete and had scored 90 per cent in her ninth grade exams—raised her hand. “Do sports quotas really work for girls like me?” she asked. “My mother told me sports is just a distraction and won’t get me anywhere.” The question reinforced Shrinagesh’s conviction that his initiative was of paramount importance. “You’ve already done the hard part in your sports and academic achievements,” he told her. “Sports quotas could be your pathway to a better future.”
It is a truth that unfortunately few girls in India are aware of. “In a population of over 1.4 billion, the chances of turning sporting success into a professional career are significantly low, and even lower for low-income girls due to the poor sporting infrastructure,” says Shrinagesh. “For that reason precisely, EduKick Naari is the need of the hour since it allows every girl a chance to use her sporting achievements to open doors for herself through education. Sports quotas are one of the few systems already in place that reward athletic effort with academic opportunity. But without guidance, they go unused. EduKick Naari ensures that even in a system where professional pathways are scarce, sports still becomes a stepping stone to a better future.”
EduKick Naari has tied up with NGOs like Khel Khel Mein Foundation (KKMF), Dribble Academy and Mera India Mera Adhikar (MIMA) to help over 100 women across Haryana, Delhi, UP and Rajasthan. Through structured workshops, the non-profit educates girls about the sports quota system in Indian colleges and how to crack it. The sessions cover everything from eligibility criteria to required documentation. Each girl is also offered personalised guidance. EduKick Naari has distributed a practical guidebook in various regional languages to help girls manoeuvre the Indian sports quota system, for which it was adjudged one among the Top30 in India in the Deakin University NextGen Changemakers Competition in 2024.
Both Shrinagesh’s father and grandparents were national-level athletes. Shrinagesh, too, is an avid football player, training under different academies in Delhi-NCR. He has captained his school at the district and state level and also played at the national level (AIFF Elite League—U17 and AIFF Junior League—U15). In fact, it was while training for the AIFF Elite League Nationals at his academy (Bhaichung Bhutia Football Schools) that he noticed that the girls at their sister club, Garwhal FC’s U19 women’s team, were faced with a tough choice—either take their love for sports forward, hoping that they would make it professionally, or give up sports to pursue their education. He started wondering why such a trade-off had to happen. While researching sports quotas for women, he unearthed an alarming lack of awareness about them among the girls. In an attempt to bridge this gap between sports and educational opportunities, he founded EduKick Naari.
The journey has not been easy though. The biggest roadblock was getting the NGOs onboard. Even with the few NGOs that responded, Shrinagesh found it difficult to find time slots for workshops in between his school, exams and football training. “However, with KKMF’s trust in our first workshop, we were able to successfully kickstart them, creating valuable partnerships and resulting in tangible impact for the girls,” says Shrinagesh. The young athlete might as well have been channelling his inner Shah Rukh Khan when he says in the film Chak De India!—ironically about women hockey players striving to overcome obstacles to win the World Cup—“What is not possible is what I want to do.” After all, in sports, as in life, to score big, you need to dream big.
