Dai Li went to the municipal sports school and found Professor Qinghua Sun.
Qinghua Sun was a math teacher. Because sports training was seen as more important than cultural classes in sports school, the latter was like decorative furniture with no practical function. That was the same reason Qinghua Sun had no chance of being promoted and was still an ordinary teacher.
In the HR office, Dai Li was filling out the application seriously. Qinghua Sun stood right next to him and began his incessant speech. "Back a few years ago, our sports school would never hire contract teachers. But this year is different. Our new principal, Lu, met with corporate and all the other key high schools in our city and agreed to train the sports talent students for them. We provide the teachers, and the high schools will take care of the training fields and students. That's why we are out of hands and need to recruit some coach assistants from the society."
"So this recruitment is for the quick training of sports talent students." Dai Li nodded. He was very familiar with sports talent students because he had just been one of them.
There were three ways for sports talent students to enter colleges. The first was to become a high-level athlete. The admission rate for high-level athletes was very low. The benefit, though, was that they got a chance to enter a college without taking any tests, which provided them with more choices of colleges. To become a high-level athlete, one had to be a national first-class athlete in an individual sport or a key player on a sports team who had ranked in the top eight of national games. These two requirements might not be difficult at all for excellent students from sports schools, but it was an unreachable goal for high school students.
The second way to enter college was the special exam for sports. It was a special enrollment system that could lower the admission score. For example, if the admission score for a college was 500 points normally, then the special exam for sports only required 100 points to enter the same college. Compared to the high-level athletes, the threshold for the special exam for sports was much lower. However, one still needs to have the certificate of national second-class athlete to be qualified to take the special exam for sports in each college.
The third way was to become a sports talent student. It was mostly the same as normal enrollment, but the admission score was a little bit lower. However, it was not as low as the special exams for sports. It was very easy to become a sports talent student. You didn't need to be a national athlete. All one needed to do was to take the independent enrollment exam held by each college. After New Year's Day, the examinees who went from one college to another were all sports talent students. This was regarded as a shortcut for many examinees. Dai Li had entered college this way.
There were also some majors that were related to sports, like physical education, for example. Even though the examines had no professional sports skills at any level, they could still take the exam. However, the admission score wouldn't change from the normal passing line.
It took a long time to train and become a high-level athlete or pass the special exam for sports. One had to be the best of the best across the whole city to get the label of first-class athlete and become a high-level athlete as a high school student. This was because a national first-class athlete had to get a record that reached a certain standard in provincial or national games to get the title.
Sports talent students could be trained in a short period of time. The threshold of the exam for sports talent students was very low; one could start during the last year of high school and be well on track. If for six months one worked hard for half of every afternoon, they would have no problem passing a few exams in several colleges.
The school could raise their admission rate for colleges if they could turn students with normal grades into sports talent students. However, since the quota of sports teachers in high school was very low, and the training results were not as good as the sports school, this corporation was brought to the table. The sports school provided schools with coaches in order to help each high school train sports talent students.
The number of coaches in the sports school was not enough to meet the demand since there were dozens of high schools in Yuzhou City. The sports school also had to make sure that the training inside their own school could be run normally. Because the quota of permanent coaches had been reached, the school had to hire some coach assistants to meet the demand.
…
After one week, Dai Li took the written exam. The recruitment of contract coach's assistants in the sports school was very attractive. There were more than 100 applicants. The levels of the applicants were all very different. Most of them had graduated from a sports school or sports college and only had a diploma of technical secondary school or junior college. People like Dai Li who were from an undergraduate college could rank extremely high here.
There was no doubt that Dai Li had advantages in the written exam since his major was sports training. He had more knowledge of sports than the others. If someone asked Dai Li to race them on the playground, he might lose—but he was definitely better than most when it came to theories.
The results of the written test were very satisfying. He ranked first on the list. As long as he could make it somewhere in the middle of the following fitness test, he should be able to stay.
There were four subjects in the fitness test for the recruitment—the 100m sprint, the 800m race, the standing long jump, and the 5 kilogram shot put. These were the most basic subjects of the fitness test. Since the sports coaches were not athletes, they were only required to have normal physical ability. That was why fitness only took up 1/3 of the entire score.
Dai Li had 80 points in sports ability, which was higher than many average people. His major, sports training, had required that he finish 40% of the course in the training field, so his physical makeup had improved a lot.
He was not a professional athlete, though. There were some retired athletes among the applicants whose sports ability were excellent, even though they hadn't achieved any records during their time. They were better than Dai Li fitness-wise for sure.
Luckily, the people who showed up on the top of the list in the fitness test had gotten very average grades on the written exam. Some of them were even on the bottom of the list. These ex-athletes who knew nothing outside of sports only had diplomas from technical secondary school. There was no way that they could compete with college students like Dai Li who had majored in sports training.
Dai Li only got a normal score on the fitness test, but he still ranked very high overall since he had done perfectly on the written exam.
…
"I'm employed! There is no need to worry about the job now." Dai Li's face was full of hope. He felt he was one step closer to the coaching career he envisioned.