It was his fourth and final lap. With several runners in front of him, 14-year-old Bagas had no choice except to speed up.
As he approached the finish line, the 10th grader smiled seeing his mother Sumijah, 43, waving her hands beside the running track.
“Go Bagas, go!” she shouted.
Bagas’s T-shirt was soaked with sweat and he was short of breath, but he persevered until he finally completed the 1.6-kilometer run.
Not number one, but it was more than enough to make his mother smile again.
”I was so worried, I thought my son would not make it,” she said.
Sumijah was not the only parent with a pounding heart that hot, sunny afternoon.
Hundreds of parents packed Ragunan sport complex in South Jakarta on Monday to see their children compete in an athletic audition held by the City Sport and Youth Agency.
The free audition, held from Dec. 12 to 20, will decide on the 250 students to be admitted to the Ragunan sports school and free education, free accommodation and pocket money.
As of Sunday, nearly 3,000 elementary school and junior high school students have signed up to audition.
Monday’s preliminary audition saw the participating students competing to pass a series of physical tests, which include a 30-meter sprint, 1,600-meter run, push ups and board jump.
The top 500 students will be then invited to follow a number of “harder” physical endurance tests and to show off their technical skills in one of the 18 sports disciplines.
Hendro Wardoyo, a field coordinator for the audition, said such step-by-step selection was designed to filter students who were physically eligible to follow the entire audition.
”We, for example, don’t want to see any of the participants collapse during the audition,” said Hendro, a lecturer at Jakarta State University’s (UNJ) sports faculty.
UNJ was appointed by the city’s Sport and Youth Agency to run most of the audition stages.
The audition has encouraged parents to support their children.
Sumijah, who lives in Kebagusan, South Jakarta, said she hoped her son, who aspires to be a badminton athlete, would pass the audition.
“If he could enter the sports school, at least we don’t need to think about his school tuition for high school.
“And who knows if someday he could be as famous as shuttler Taufik Hidayat,” she said, referring to the 2004 Athens Olympic gold medalist and 2005 Anaheim World Champion.
Ferial Darwis, 50, a Bekasi resident and civil servant, has another reason to allow her 12-year-old son to audition.
“My son’s teachers and friends always told me he had a passion and bright talent in athletics,” the mother of five said.
“If he really loves what he does, why don’t I support him?”
Roman Darmaika, a sport teacher at SDN Gunung Sari Selatan 01 elementary school in Kemayoran,
Central Jakarta, said he signed up six students for the audition, but only two had followed Monday’s physical tests.
