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Punjabis of Seattle Host An International Tournament
Seattle, U.S.A ( September 17, 2000 )
On September 16th and 17th, Punjab Sports Club, a newly formed club in Seattle organized an international tournament of Punjabis for the first time in the city of SeaTac that used to be South Seattle. This tournament drew Kabbadi and Soccer teams from U.S.A, Canada and the United Kingdom. On the whole, this event was a success and people enjoyed it very much. However, such enjoyment brings some responsibilities with it. Visitors have to be especially careful about littering if they want to enjoy such tournaments year after year. There is no guarantee that the future requests for obtaining the playgrounds for such tournaments will be granted automatically if the pattern of littering exhibited this year continues. I feel no pride in recalling that in 1981 the Punjabi Community living in Mississauga ( near Toronto, Canada ) was denied their request for the playgrounds to organize their tournament and the reason was littering the playgrounds during their previous event. I had to use my humble influence to get their request for playgrounds granted and they were finally able to organize their tournament.
It may not be possible to turn everybody into a good boy-scout/girl-scout or a good citizen for that matter until next time, therefore it is incumbent upon the management to hire someone who can continue to clean the sports complex all day long. I am not suggesting something unheard of because every year I go to several Fairs as many of you do too and most places use this method to keep the Fair Grounds litter free.
It was a very good effort by the Punjabis of Seattle and should be considered a success and the organizers be commended for it despite the littering exhibition mentioned above and despite some organizational discrepancies and some minor un-sportsmanlike occurrences beyond the control of the management. At least, the Punjabis of Seattle did not go as far as the Punjabis of Sydney did as indicated in the News From Australia section in this issue. Therefore, Sydney retains its first place in preserving the Punjabi reet mentioned by Dr. Tanda in his report from Sydney, Australia.
On the following three pages, we have posted some scenes from this tournament.