The 19th Asian Games Hangzhou has been wrapped up, but sports enthusiasm remains high. On October 15, "Industrial Bank Cup" Shanghai Amateur Games 2023 - Football League - "Sports Rhythm of Yangpu, Show of Yourselves" University Flag Football Open took place at Shanghai University of Sport.

 

Flag football is an emerging city sport in recent years. In Yangpu, this sport has been known to a growing number of young people who have taken active part in it. The tournament is the first practice of the Shanghai Amateur Games - Football League in Yangpu.

 

The tournament attracted teams from 8 universities, including Fudan University, University of Shanghai for Science and Technology (USST), Shanghai University of Electric Power (SHUEP), Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine (SHUTCM), East China University of Political Science and Law, Shanghai University of Engineering Science, Shanghai Institute of Technology and Shanghai University of Sport. After intense competition, USST won the championship, followed by SHUTCM and SHUEP.

 

Actually, the brilliant results in flag football are an epitome of USST's efforts to press ahead with the physical education (PE) reform, so that students can have fun, strengthen their physique, improve their personality and temper their will in physical exercise. As the only university in Shanghai to offer a flag football course, USST built Shanghai's first standard 7-on-7 flag football field early in 2013, and the teaching team wrote and published the first professional textbook on this sport.

 

Developing interest-based expertise, benefiting students for life

 

Teaching essentials of movements in class, serving as part-time coaches or referees in spare time, promoting flag football in the form of club or community after graduation…under a mode featuring integration of learning, training and competition, USST's flag football trainees are growing rapidly, and can basically coach newcomers one year after getting started. Many graduates even turned their love for flag football into a new way out for career development.

 

Xiao Qiming, who graduated from the College of Communication and Art Design, USST in 2015, witnessed the highlight of USST's flag football team winning the municipal championship as the captain. "That year, we only had a coach, and there was no standard training ground, but we were trained until after dark every time, and we finally took the municipal championship through concerted and painstaking efforts." Since then, the team has won the NFL University Bowl Shanghai for ten consecutive years, taken the second place in the 2016 and 2019 national finals, and claimed the title of the Shanghai University American Flag Football Championships from 2016 to 2019.

 

After graduation, seeing the promotion of Frisbee and other sports in communities in China, Xiao started a business with his classmates by organizing flag football community activities in Shanghai. As more and more people joined, the Huddle community mode created by him was quickly spread to Beijing, Chengdu, Wuhan, Shijiazhuang and other cities.

 

"Serving as coaches and referees in class and training can effectively train their teaching ability and communication skills, and foster a sense of responsibility and group honor in them," said Zhu Xiaoling, Director of the Department of Physical Education at USST. "We will recommend students to work part-time in football training agencies and other venues in their spare time, and some excellent graduates will be directly employed by relevant clubs or communities, to help promote the trendy sport - flag football in Shanghai and even around the country."

 

Students serve as lecturers, "flipped classroom" arouse new vitality of PE

 

The roles of coaches and players on the training ground are "flipped", so are the roles of teachers and students in online sports lessons. To deepen the ideological and political construction of courses, and optimize the mode of online-offline integrated training, the Department of Physical Education of USST has explored and created an online video course made by students. Supplemented by teaching materials, the video course is available for students to view and learn anytime on USST's "One Net Learning" online-offline integrated teaching platform, to help students improve their capability of independent learning through the combination of books and videos, and understand and master course contents.

 

Students speak and practice in teachers' position, and teachers add key contents and answer questions. This not only allows students to exercise their language skills and enhances their confidence, but also improves their learning ability and the ability to show themselves, and realizes transition from the traditional teaching mode of "teacher on the stage" to "students on the stage", said Wan Lei, a PE teacher at USST. As USST's exploration to create a more individualized mode of PE, it provides a good way of thinking for sports practitioners.

 

"Online sports courses are good assistance to learning, a mastery of essentials of movements through preview before class can boost our confidence in sharing what we have learned with our classmates on the podium, and we can watch videos again to figure out what we don't understand in class, this is the 'knowledge base' and 'energy station' for us to strengthen our physique and improve our skills…" said Qian Jiawei, an undergraduate student at Business School, USST enrolled in 2021.

 

While advancing the PE curriculum reform, the PE teaching team of USST has continued to improve its professional research capacity, forming a virtuous circle between teaching and research. Take flag football for example, the team wrote and published the professional textbook on 7-on-7 flag football - American Flag Football, which has made teaching more standardized and systematic, boosted the effect of class teaching and facilitated the promotion of the sport in the society.

 

Training sports backbone by substituting matches for lessons

 

"Unlike traditional teaching modes, the competition class offers a 'match instead of teaching' mode that has attracted more interested students to sports," said Wu Di, a 2021 graduate from the women's soccer competition class at the School of Environment and Architecture, USST. "I knew the role of soccer referee through the teacher's introduction and recommendation, obtained a certificate of soccer referee after passing the course assessment, and have officiated various soccer matches." Now she is studying for a master's degree in education at the International College of Football, Tongji University.

 

Substituting matches for lessons is an innovative exploration of USST to create a new model of PE teaching and practice, and to press ahead with the PE curriculum reform. The competition class formed a team made up of students with good specialized sports skills, strong management capacity and rich sports expertise, and adopted the league system under which each student should participate in at least one intense match and be trained twice or three times per week; under the management mode based on that of professional clubs, students act as athletes, referees or tournament managers (e.g. team managers) according to their specialties.

 

The competition class mode has been extended to 12 sports, including soccer, basketball, volleyball, table tennis, badminton, floorball, flag football, fit dance, karate, long-distance running, intellectual sports and healthy fat burning. Each semester, more than 1,400 students selected courses and completed nearly 1,000 matches. Numbers of students have obtained corresponding rating certificates of referees or coaches after passing tests.

 

USST will further enhance its advantages and promote the integration of sports and education, so that students can strengthen their physique through sports and see the beauty of sports in pursuit of excellence, self-transcendence and unity; and so that students interested in social sports can grow into the backbone of social sports who are capable of physical exercise and sports appreciation and evaluation, to make their due contributions to the building of China into a sports power and healthy country, said Zhang Hua, Vice President of USST.