The Sakal School Olympics is an annual event happening since many years in Pune. They aim to promote sportsmanship, teamwork and physical fitness among students, making it a significant event in the academic calendar for schools in Pune. The event was scheduled to run from 14^th November to 14^th December 2025. This month-long competition featured a variety of sports and activities for students from different schools. NSDC is proud to be Dental Partners for such a prestigious school event on sports in Pune. Engaging in this event aligned with the mission of NSDC of making large scale awareness on oral health and mouthguards for athletes. With participation of many NSDC members across Pune, multiple sports, over 2000 school athletes, 100s of coaches and thousands of parents. This sensitization event has proven to be the largest, not just in the history of NSDC, but in the history of sports events in India as well wherein no where has oral health awareness and dental screenings have been done on such a large scale at the school level! NSDC plans to work across all levels of athletes, and esp. at the grassroot level.

Free dental screenings, demo of mouthguard samples, creating awareness on oral health by discussions and giving information pamphlets, prescribing medicine to those who got injured or were having acute dental pain……. NSDC members had their hands full during all these events. One particular touching story was of a 11yr old boy at a chess competition who came running to one of our members and was in tears as he was suffering from acute dental pain and abscess in the last 2 days. He had taken medications from a local dentist but since the pain was severe and he had to be present at the event, he had to attend the event and be part of the competition with such kind of pain! Isn’t it the responsibility of the parents, coaches and the schools not to let this happen? But a bigger responsibility lies on the shoulder of the dentist who needs to make them aware about all these things. It is exactly for this that NSDC runs Volunteer programs for coaches, parents and sports professionals to bridge the gap of knowledge regarding basic and preventive oral care for athletes!