Two footballs and an untrained coach chart a course out of Yuanbao's mountainous terrain for its students

At 6:30 am on any given day in December it is still dark in the mountain village of Yuanbao in Dafang county of Southwest China's Guizhou province. But Wu Yujie, 12, and her teammates were already at the playground of the Yuanbao Primary School for routine half-an-hour exercises and soccer training under Xu Zhaowei, their Chinese teacher and coach.

The soccer team consists of more than 50 girls of varying ages, all students from the second to the sixth grade at the school, the youngest one just 8 years old and the oldest 12.

Wu, the team leader, is the most skilled, knowing her way around with the ball. Anyone who is not good at passing the ball or making a particular move observes Wu.

The girls attend three training sessions five days a week. They train for two and a half hours, from 4:00 pm to 6:30 pm, after school; for half-an-hour after 9:00 pm; and then again in the early morning.

The rigorous training has helped. They have won several soccer championships including national-level ones, earning a reputation as the Yuanbao girls' soccer team.

Their good performance has earned some girls seats in famous schools in big cities. Eight of the girls go to the China Football School of Beijing Sport University in Zunyi, Guizhou province, and five to Guangzhou Polytechnic of Sports in Guangzhou, Guangdong province.

In a way, the sport has paved the way for these girls from the mountains to see a bigger world outside and realize their dreams.

"It's not that soccer is the only way for these children to walk out of the mountains to a better future, but at least, currently, playing soccer offers them a way," said Xu.

Two footballs, Nine Bends

Nestled amid a range of mountains, Yuanbao village has just one winding road leading to the outside world. Because of the bends in the winding road through the mountains, the road has earned the name "Nine Bends".

There are very few young adults in the village as most of them have left to earn a living in the cities. Yuanbao Primary School has about 300 students, half of them staying with their grandparents. The children hardly ever get a chance to venture far away from the mountains.

Forty-two-year-old Xu came to the school in September 2013, as a teacher volunteering to assist with rural education. He teaches Chinese to students of the third and sixth grades.

The school didn't have a playground until 2017.

Xu played with his students on an uneven ground in front of the school building.

In 2017, when somebody donated two footballs to the school, Xu began playing it with the students.

"At the beginning, they had no idea how to play the game, but they showed great interest," said Xu.

The two footballs were among the few pieces of sports equipment they had on the campus.

Some days later, schoolmaster Wang Guangwen managed to get a public welfare organizer to build a soccer ground for the school. Two months after the field came up, they began holding a sports festival for primary and junior middle school students in the county.

"Footballs, a playing field and then a sports festival, it was time to organize a soccer team next," said Xu.

In less than a week, 30 students applied to join the team. And their unofficial training began.

As a soccer fan, Xu has some basic knowledge about soccer. He spends a lot of time learning from videos.

He didn't expect the girls to play so well and win laurels for the school.

"The idea was to just play together and exercise. Besides, I wanted them to learn teamwork by playing soccer," said Xu.

But the girls surprised Xu during the county's sports festival by becoming champions among primary schools in the county.

"They demonstrated a tenacious spirit and a pure thirst to succeed," said Xu, adding that he was impressed by that.

Good performance in the games won recognition for the Yuanbao soccer team. Several players got admission into good junior middle schools in the county with their outstanding soccer playing ability.

Xu and Wang realized that soccer could give the children better chances of getting quality education. They started putting more efforts on developing the school's soccer team.

In 2019, the two applied successfully for their school to become a demonstration school for campus soccer and won more support for developing soccer courses from local education authorities and social organizations.

The school now has a new soccer ground, measuring 25 meters by 43 meters, which is large enough for the students to train in. They even have new jerseys. The school team has selected more students.

In addition to some 50 girls in the girls' team, there are 30 boys in the boys' team, accounting for one-third of the total number of students in the school.

"Some students have quit, but most others are slogging on. They have all the good qualities of Chinese women football players — they are strong, they like to train very hard and have an indomitable spirit," said Xu.

The students are proud to have become soccer players. The sport is helping them fulfill their dreams such as flying by aircraft and seeing the sea.

Role models

In 2020, five players of the Yuanbao soccer team secured a chance to get professional training at the Guangzhou Polytechnic of Sports. The school has trained several world champions such as diving champion Quan Hongchan.

The selected girls will complete their education from primary school through college in Guangzhou, and represent the city in soccer, Xu said.

Five months after training in Guangzhou, the five girls went back to Yuanbao to join their home school's soccer team and play a game in Kunming, capital of Yunnan province. The Yuanbao team won the championship, a victory that Xu treasures the most.

Exchanges with the five girls motivated younger players in Yuanbao a lot. Wang Jiayue, one of the five girls, became the "Top Campus Scorer".

A player recalled that Wang showed them how to find their way with a ball on the ground, how to warm up before a match and what to do after a match, and all these were techniques they had never heard of before.

And the younger players saw that the five girls' Mandarin is much better, and they speak some English too.

However, it has not been easy for the five girls to adjust to life and training in Guangzhou. After all, the youngest was just 10 years old and the oldest 12 when they went to study around 1,000 kilometers away from home.

After training in Guangzhou, Wang realized they knew so little earlier. "The training here is much harder. Their technique and speeds are much better than ours," said Wang.

The five girls also face difficulties learning Mandarin, mathematics and English.

"We don't understand what they are saying in English," said Wang. Also, the girls were often homesick as the food in Guangzhou is very different from that back home.

In such moments, they thought of Xu and texted him. He, in turn, encouraged them to be strong and stay on.

"It's normal to be homesick. After all, they are so young. It takes time to get used to a new environment," said Xu.

The young players who have walked out of the mountainous regions are contributing to the development of their hometown school in their own ways.

Wang, who attended the Union of European Football Associations Nations League, took the story of the girls' soccer team to the world stage last year, and Zhang Ziyan, who became the champion of a soccer match in Guangdong province donated her medal to Yuanbao Primary School to encourage her younger brothers and sisters.

The residents of Yuanbao village feel the five girls have walked out of the mountains to a bigger world with their good performance and become an inspiration for other girls.

The team leader, Wu, looks forward to getting a chance to study in a bigger city. Her elder sister, who joined the Yuanbao soccer team in 2017, got admission into a good junior middle school in the county with her good performance on the field and is now studying in a senior middle school in Chongqing.

This brought hope to Wu's mother, who believes playing soccer creates opportunities for people in the village.

To accompany Wu, and also help the soccer team, she stopped working in the cities and returned to the village in 2020 to cook for the soccer players, even though the pay is much less than that she earned in the cities.

Xu's expectations

When he organized the soccer team, Xu never expected it would pave the way for children in the mountainous region, especially the girls, to realize a better future.

In the beginning, he was able to play soccer with his students without any pressure.

However, as the school's popularity increased because of the soccer they were playing, Xu's pressure kept mounting. He now needs to shoulder the hopes of more children, and their parents too.

Some girl students transferred themselves from other schools to Yuanbao in order to be able to play in the soccer team and get admission into a better junior middle school.

Some soccer players were spending more than an hour walking to school, which was affecting their training. The school came to their aid by converting two classrooms into dormitories. The players now live on the campus and get more time to train.

Until 2020, it was Xu who cooked three meals a day for the players. But now, Wu's mother takes care of the same, thus reducing his load.

Despite the satisfaction of doing his job, Xu feels "very tired" easily as he was diagnosed with diabetes two years ago.

"When I came to Yuanbao, I didn't have a plan on how long I will stay here, but now I have to make a lot of plans, from daily training to charting the soccer team's development in the following years," said Xu.

Xu feels bad that he is not a professional football player who can offer optimum training to the young players. He hopes some professional players will come forward to train them and help them learn better playing techniques.