Sports school

A sports school (Russian: Детско-Юношеская Спортивная Школа, ДЮСШ) is a type of educational institution for children that originated in the Soviet Union.

[3] Many legendary athletes, such as Nikolai Andrianov, Nellie Kim, Alexander Popov, Viktor Krovopuskov, Vladislav Tretiak, Valeri Kharlamov, Katarina Witt, Anatoly Alyabyev and Sergey Bubka started their path to Olympic success from Soviet sports schools.

After the USSR joined as a full member of the International Olympic Committee in 1951, Specialized Children and Youth (Sports) Schools of the Olympic Reserve (Russian: Специализированная Детско-Юношеская (Спортивная) Школа Олимпийского Резерва, СДЮ(С)ШОР) began to be opened to prepare young athletes for the sports of highest achievements.

As an alternative there is also Complex Specialized Children and Youth School of the Olympic Reserve (Ukrainian: Комплексна Спеціалізована Дитячо-Юнацька Школа Олімпійського Резерву, КСДЮШОР).

Before 1989 in the Soviet Union existed a network of regional boarding schools of sports profile (Russian: ОШИСП, Областная школа-интернат спортивного профиля).

In their strive to get the best out of children, a lot of coaches resort to verbal abuse as well as severe and sometimes sadistic physical punishments.

The situation is even worse in sports boarding schools where parents exercise little control and children are fully under the coaches' authority.

Soviet experience of mass children and youth sports education was applied by Eastern Europe an countries, in particular East Germany, where they were called Kinder- und Jugendsportschule (KJS)[9] for instance, Katarina Witt, Sven Fischer and Andreas Thom attended such schools.

Residential programs for Football and Basketball would take in teenage students on yearly scholarships that involved sporting and education requirements.

Players to have gone through this system include Mark Viduka and Lauren Jackson who both attended at age 17 and went on to represent Australia in their respective sports at an international level.

The gymnastics program took in even younger students, which included Philippe Rizzo, who was 14 years when he entered the AIS in 1995 before going on to represent Australia at the Sydney 2000 and Greece 2004 Summer Olympics.