Goals not guns: How a girls football team in India’s Manipur beats violence

The team keeps up its training amid the ethnic violence that has rocked the northeastern Indian state.

Andro, India – Smart in her neon blue jacket and bright red sneakers, Hemarani slips out of the large thatched-roof mud hut and stands squinting up at the rising sun. The sky is streaked pink over the Nongmaiching Ching hills, and the wide open field before her is still swimming in fog. Cows are grazing in the green pastures, and alongside, a group of girls in their football kit is warming up.

This is Andro, a village 26km (16 miles) southeast of Imphal, the capital of India’s northeastern state of Manipur. The hut Hemarani, 30, has just emerged from is the official clubhouse of Andro’s girls football club – AMMA FC – and she is one of the trainers.

This practice session in January is the last one for the girls before an official rest period, which lasts until April. Almost all 30 of the club’s players – aged five to 18 – have turned up. Many in the team have been preparing for their school leaving examinations, and this training session offers one last merry diversion from their books.

Quickly, the girls pair up and pick up the pace through rounds of kicks, passes, headers and speed drills. The daily, two-hour practice sessions always end with a game, Hemarani says. “The point is to play everyday.”

She gives some of the girls a few pointers about technique, divides up the teams and then lets the senior players like Chingakham Anjali Devi and Phanjoubam Ameba Devi, both of whom are currently players on Imphal’s U-17 team, take over. Twelve of AMMA FC’s present and former players currently play nationally, five internationally.

The pleasant thump of the ball against boots, calls of “pass,” “open, open” and laughter