A newly launched eight-team tournament illustrates how grassroots sport is being used to organize youth participation and preserve athletic structures amid limited institutional support.
Khost | By Sara Amiri
The start of an eight-team hockey tournament in Khost is less about competition than about continuity. Organized by the provincial representation of the Afghanistan Hockey Federation with support from the Department of Physical Education and Sports and the municipal authority, the event reflects a local effort to keep organized sport functional at a time when formal leagues and national pathways remain constrained.
The opening match saw the Nadershah Kot team defeat Delpuri 3–1, securing the tournament’s first win. Yet the result itself was secondary to what the tournament represents: an attempt to maintain structure, discipline, and collective participation for young athletes in a sporting environment that operates largely outside sustained national programming.
Hockey remains a marginal sport in Khost, which makes initiatives like this one more revealing than routine. Scheduled to run for a week, the tournament serves as an informal talent platform and a mechanism for keeping local teams active. More broadly, it underscores how provincial sport in Afghanistan continues to rely on local coordination and short-term initiatives to survive, compensating for the absence of stable, centralized development systems.