Nita Football Academy, Bhubaneswar
‘Nita Football Academy provides Football coaching for the underprivileged children, so that they can pursue a career in it, find a job and achieve their goals in life.’
As far as sports is concerned, Odisha was always rich with talents. But what it always lacked was a professional approach and setup to nurture those talents. One such story was of Odisha’s Football legend and senior coach Late Nanda Kishore Patnaik’s who at one time single handedly tried his best to raise the standard of Odisha’s Womens’ football team with limited resources and setup.
In came Er. Subrat Das, Mr. Ashok Kumar Baral, Ms. Sradhanjali Samantaray (Former Indian Womens’ Football Captain), Mr. Rama Naik, Adv. Satyabrata Sarangi and Mr. Subhendra Sahoo who recognized the importance of a sportive atmosphere and professional setup for the underprivileged trainees to nurture their skills and sportive talents. They believed that investing in youth entails building a solid foundation for future leaders by maximizing their potentials through competitive sports. All of them had a common goal and dream to raise the standard of sports in Odisha to national and international level. When great minds come together, big ideas come to life. So after thorough planning and continuing operations for a few years, on the 69th Independence Day of India, i.e. 15th August 2015, a foundation in form of Nita Football Academy was born to fulfill this dream.
Soon the Academy became fully functional and was registered under Nita Football Trust with registration number 41081809788 on 20th August, 2018. Over the years, the Academy has grown to have full-fledged coaching and training facilities in three branches spanning different parts of Odisha and is aspiring to expand its presence in thirty (30) districts of Odisha with full-fledged hostels providing both lodging and fooding facilities.
As far as the success story of the Academy is concerned, until now, eighteen (18) students have played the Nationals and fourteen (14) have been placed in Government jobs.
In future, the Academy aims to improve its functionality by proper channelization and utilization of the best available talents through sports and fitness activities. It aspires to achieve that through futuristic proposals in the next three years with an objective to search hidden talents of each district and groom them to be professional football players. These sporting talents are to be given state of the art coaching and training facilities in order to enable them to be a part of the best teams within India and abroad.
We believe, with due support from all quarters, the Academy will be able to bring laurels for the state and the nation.