Espinola, waiting to graduate in Physical Education when the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 pandemic ends, made his debut this week as a virtual teacher, with Medina as his student, with a 15-minute class in Guarani and Spanish, as part of the "Virtual Sports" initiative, promoted by the National Sports Secretariat (SND).
"Nowadays, it's not my turn to be on the field, which is where I always wanted to be. Now I do what others did for me, which is to teach, and that's what I want to do in the future, to do what my teachers did: teach, help others overcome themselves, and help most indigenous peoples to be better," said this young man from the Guarani ñandeva people, in the Paraguayan Chaco.
In his debut as a virtual teacher, he acknowledged that it was "a bit" difficult for him to go from being close to people to having to "look at a camera" to broadcast a program that "over 100 people are watching".
Next week the classes will be in the Maká language and the roles will change: Tisimenu ut will be the coach and Espinola will take his orders.
"We stay at home, but we have to do something and, if we don't have equipment, we have to use whatever is at home to exercise," explained Tisimenu ut, who belongs to the Maká community of Mariano Roque Alonso, a town near Asuncion.
With no excuses to justify laziness and sedentarism, their virtual training barely requires cones, a ball, and a plyometric ladder for a "functional training".
"These are very easy exercises to do with things we have at home, with our own body, because in functional training you work with the weight of the body and make movements that we do in our daily lives," said Espinola.
INDIGENOUS WORLD FOOTBALL CHAMPIONS
Osvaldo and José have been working together for several years, since they started training for the American Indigenous Peoples Cup, held in Chile in 2015, or the 2017 World Indigenous Peoples Games in Canada.
Both boast having made their national team a historic undefeated champion in both tournaments and maintain their spirit of victory, but also the memory of the previous effort, to face the health quarantine that has been in effect in Paraguay since early March.
Virtual Sports carries out its daily live broadcasts on Facebook and Youtube from the Olympic Park premises live from Monday to Friday at 09:00, 14:00, and 18:30hs. Likewise, Paraguay TV HD shares the classes in three afternoon time slots: 15:15, 19:40, and 23:30, as reported by the SND on its official website.