Sitting on the school ground,with their heads tilted up,the children are all ears as if they are about to hear a fairytale. Forgetting all the odds they face in their daily life,these children,mostly wards of labourers,rickshaw pullers and mechanics,want to hear something different. And that is exactly what they get at the Sikhya School in Sector 46. Here,the under-privileged students meet each others like family members and learn many new things. Showing them the way is Sangeeta Rana,sports teacher and National Institute of Sports-qualified boxing coach. She tells them stories in the form of tips and instructions,which helps them script their own success stories in the field of boxing. Besides winning the gold in a state championship,Sangeetas students have brought home several silver and bronze medals from sub-junior national championships. All this has not been,however,an easy task,says Sangeeta. It seemed an uphill task to train these players when I joined this school three years ago. I wanted to encourage women boxers in Chandigarh and approached a few students whom I thought were physically strong. Their hard work made things easy, says Sangeeta,who has played two national championships herself. Sunita was one talent which came raw to Sangeeta and she furnished her into a fine pugilist. I cherish my fight with my idol Mary Koms sister Nehal the most. Manipuri girls are physically and technically superior to us in all respects,but we showed them we were not behind them by handling her a 22-1 defeat at the sub-junior national championship in Andhra Pradesh last year, says the 14-year-old girl from Nepal. Boxing was an alien word for all these students before they enrolled themselves in Sikhya School. We had never heard or seen boxing. It was here that we learnt what boxing was all about. It feels nice when our hard work is rewarded in the form of medals, says Gurpreet,whose father works as a mechanic. The school takes care of all the facilities,including education,food,books and practice kit. With the national championship in sight,these children have their eyes set on the gold. We definitely want to bring the gold medal for Sangeeta Madam. We are putting in more hard work than the previous year, says a confident Rita.
