Countdown begins for Kodagu family hockey festival 2025

The Kodagu family hockey festival is celebrating its silver jubilee this year.
| Photo Credit: Special Arrangement

Preparations for the ‘25th Kodava Family Hockey Festival’ are in full swing and the countdown for the annual event has begun. At least 400 teams are slated to participate this year.

The tournament is set to take place from March 28 to April 27 at three grounds, including the ones at Field Marshal K.M. Cariappa College and the Police Academy. This year’s event is being hosted by the Muddanda family, which has a long tradition of service and excellence in various fields, according to the organisers.

The details of the event were shared by officials of the Kodava Hockey Academy and Muddanda Hockey Festival Committee with the media in Mysuru recently. Pandanda K. Bopanna, president of the Kodava Hockey Academy, said that 370 teams had participated in the 2024 edition of the family hockey festival. This year, the number is expected to be in the range of 400 teams.

A file photo of an exhibition match between India XI and Kodagu XI, during the 16th edition of the family hockey tournament ‘Iychettira Hockey Cup 2012’, hosted by the Iychettira family, at Ammathi (South Kodagu), on April 21, 2012.
| Photo Credit:
K. Murali Kumar

The festival, which brings different Kodava clans and families together through hockey, will also see felicitation of the family that organised last year’s tournament, as the event entered the Guinness Book of World Records.

Ravi Pemmaiah, Secretary of the Kodava Hockey Academy, said the festival will be modelled like a ’mini Olympics’. A workshop for referees will be conducted on March 19 and 20 at Cauvery College in Virajpet.

Academy Vice-President Jaya Chinnappa said the hockey festival will be inaugurated by Virajpet MLA A.S. Ponnanna in the presence of Mysuru MP Yaduveer Krishnadatta Chamaraja Wadiyar, Rajya Sabha MP Ajay Maken, Deputy Commissioner Venkat Raja, Superintendent of Police K. Ramarajan, and national players, including Lalremsiami and Olympian Manpreet Singh.

As this year marks the silver jubilee of the family hockey festival, a slew of events will be held in the run up to the inauguration and during the course of the festival as well. Quiz contests, a cyclothon and rifle shooting are part of this year’s festival, according to the organisers.

The festival torch, akin to the Olympic torch, will be taken to the traditional ancestral houses, or Ainmane, of the various families that have hosted the tournament.

On March 28, the torch will be brought from General Thimayya Circle to the Field Marshal K.M. Cariappa College ground in a procession, according to Rashin Subbaiah, president of the Organising Committee.

As part of the silver jubilee celebrations, a women’s tournament will also be conducted in which 30 teams are expected to  take part.

The Kodava Family Hockey Festival was the initiative of retired bank official Pandanda Kuttappa. It was an attempt to bring together various Kodava families and clans through hockey, which is not a mere sport but a tradition among members of the community.