Surrey Schools kabaddi president eyes expansion to include other districts

On the heels of the Surrey High School Kabaddi League’s 2023-2024 season wrap-up that saw Queen Elizabeth Secondary crowned this year’s South Fraser Kabaddi Champions, league president Raman Bedi is looking to expand the sport provincewide.

While high school kabaddi in B.C. is currently only played by teams in Surrey, Bedi wants to bring in teams from elsewhere, starting with Maple Ridge.

“One of our coaches will be going to Maple Ridge to become a principal and he’s expressed interest in putting a team together in their district,” said Bedi, who is also a coach at Panorama Ridge Secondary.

Bedi hopes that would open the gates for other districts to compete.

While a provincial league would need to be approved and facilitated through BC School Sports, which comes with its own set of criteria and requirements, Bedi said in the meantime they want to create an invitational championship tournament, which would allow districts from anywhere in B.C. to compete.

“Some of the smaller sports like ball hockey operate an invitational provincial tournament, so that’s one option,” he said. “We would still run our South Fraser championships, but we could also run an invitational in tandem.”

Prior to next season, Bedi plans to reach out to other districts on possibly fielding teams of their own, particularly those with strong wrestling and rugby programs.

“If you’re a strong wrestler or rugby player, you’re most likely going to be very successful in Kabaddi, so students from those two sports could make for very competitive kabaddi teams,” he said.

A mixture of wrestling and rugby, Kabaddi sees opposing teams of seven commit ‘raids’ on each other’s zones by tagging somebody from the opposing team and trying to make it back to the centre without being tackled. The sport is popular in India and other south Asian countries and has drawn spectator crowds in the hundreds here in Surrey.

While the sport is prominent in South Asian culture, Bedi has seen an increasing number of diverse students taking part.

“We’ve seen students from all backgrounds be very successful, which is why we’ll be reaching out to other districts to gauge interest.

“There’s a lot of potential for this to be much bigger.”