Cometh February, Cometh Sports!! This month can literally be called as the sports month of our college because of the ongoing preparations of the All India Advani Memorial Basketball Tournament’16(AIAMBT’16) and MNIT Sports Tournament. The former is a national level basketball tournament, and the latter is an inter college sports competition. AIAMBT’16 steals all the limelight because of the magnanimity of the tournament and also the history behind it.
AIAMBT is one of the oldest events of MNIT, and is a saga that started from the year 1975. The name of the event is kept in memory of our beloved Professor late R.M. Advani, who died in a plane crash a year before the tournament. Since then, it has crossed all the boundaries to become a widely recognised tournament, not only in India, but across South Asian countries. It is also recognised by the Basketball Federation of India (BFI), in which teams from various franchise such as ONGC, Indian Service Force, Railways, and many state teams, participate in a five day long contest. Although the event came to halt in the year 1996 due to some reasons but it was revamped in the year 2012 during the golden jubilee celebration of the college.
This year promises to take the event, which will be held from 2nd to 6th march, to a whole new level with inclusion of many new teams and rise in the prize money of the competition. The preparations have started in a full swing. An orientation lecture was held this week which gave students an insight about the tournament, and the various roles in which they can contribute to it such as marketing, publicity, media and communication, content writing, graphic and web designing. Students can work in any of the chosen fields and gain hands on experience about managing a fest.
There’s a special place in my heart for this fest as I have been involved with it since 2012. Back then, I was a volunteer and had just started learning the ‘ins’ and ‘outs’ of marketing and pitching for sponsors for the fest. It taught me invaluable lessons about management of an event and importance of team work. From that event, I learnt to respect my fellow team mates and the alumni which gave blood and sweat to the fest. The relation with the fest continued in the coming years when I became the Marketing Executive. I remember it was the first time when I had pitched for a sponsor. I don’t exactly remember the name of the sponsor, but I definitely remember the experience I had that day. It was a feeling of belongingness to the fest and it also introduced me to a new career option – MARKETING. I was albeit enthusiastic to be a part of the fest and pitched for many more sponsors. In all, my hard work really paid off.
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