DUSHANBE (UCAN) -- The gymnasium resounded to cheers as the Catholic basketball team shot ball after ball into the net.

Sports School No. 5 was supposed to have rustled up a top team for this friendly match at their gym between boys 13-17 years old, but the visiting St. Joseph Church team gave them a drubbing. The audience of several dozen spectators roared in approval.

Father Ezequiel Ayala, the St. Joseph parish priest, was thrilled. "It is our first game and first victory this year, and the 56-25 score shows we didn't waste our time coaching the children," he told UCA News, standing on the sidelines of the school gym in Dushanbe on May 20.

The "sports" in the school's name means it emphasizes sports.

Father Ayala is keen to encourage such matches as he sees sport as an important component in children's development. It helps them to be healthy and to develop leadership qualities, he explained.

"We did not start this service only for Catholic kids, but opened the doors for everyone," the priest said. The parish team's starting five players comprise three Catholics, one Muslim and one Russian Orthodox youth. Father Ayala added, "I think more children will join our group after our victory."

Muslims make up 96 percent of the country's 6.5 million people, with Russian Orthodox Church members forming about 3 percent.

"Sports" may not be in the name of the Incarnate Word Institute, to which the four priests who look after the 250 Catholics in Tajikistan belong, but they come from football (soccer)-crazy Argentina, where the institute was founded in the 1980s. When they are not busy with work related to the three parishes in the country, they don shorts and play football themselves.

The missioners and St. Joseph laypeople have organized several sports activities for boys and girls. "We conduct many different programs such as football, tennis and table tennis for children as an alternative to idleness and the bad influence of the streets," Father Ayala said.

A lay parishioner conducts the boys' basketball program once a week in one of the gyms in Dushanbe with 15 boys aged 9 to 17 years, mostly Catholics, the priest said. About a dozen teenage girls also play and practice basketball once a week.

"When I first saw our rivals, I was scared of how big and menacing they looked," Orzu Saidshoev, a 17-year-old Catholic, told UCA News after the game. "I thought we would lose," he continued, but "due to teamwork and good execution, we won."

Mikhail Petrov, 16, another Catholic member of the team, told UCA News, "We like to come to the training because it develops physical power and basketball skills."

Fifteen-year-old Maxim Giuresov, also Catholic, was excited after having "easily" beaten their rivals, who, he told UCA News, practice more often than the parish team.

Father Pedro Lopez, who looks after the southern parish of Kurgan Tube, echoed Father Ayala's comments. "If we leave them without attention they will find another occupation that might be not so good," he told UCA News.

"Stationary sitting" in Internet cafes playing "Centre Strike" or other "silly games" does not give the children anything worthwhile, he said, and "only develops brutality."

Saidshoev agreed. "It is more interesting for me to play active types of sports than to sit and watch a computer screen," he said. "It is very good for our health."

Father Ayala noted they have run the basketball program for two years but played with local teams only two other times.

Flushed with victory, he said they would play more friendly matches. "In this way," he added, "local people who are unfamiliar with the Catholic Church can mix with Catholics and see they are normal people like they are."

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