Game on: Salsa Aher skips her Boards to play Junior Indian Fed Cup

Besides AITA tournaments, Salsa, who under coach Kedar Shah at Bounce Academy, has also played in ZP-level tennis tournaments and reached top spot in Maharashtra U-17 team to lead Maharashtra team at School Nationals in academic year 2015-16. She recently started playing ITF Junior (International Tennis Federation) matches and currently, her junior world ranking is 740, while her U16 AITA India ranking is fifth.

Salsa’s decision of skipping Board exams was strongly supported by her parents – Parag and Tejaswinee— who are both engineers by qualification. In order to focus more on their daughter’s game, Salsa’s mother quit her job in 2010. Her father, Parag, too quit his job in 2014 to support their daughter. There is no steady source of income at present. The couple have liquidated their assets and are managing on the income through them. “We are living a dream and we won’t stop till we get there,” said Parag.

Next on Salsa’s target is to reach main draw of Junior Tennis Grand Slam tournaments by December 2018. In order to achieve this, she trains every day vigorously for five hours and does fitness for another two hours. “Also, two weeks in a month, she has to travel across India and abroad for matches in order to improve her tennis skills and world ranking. In order to achieve the target, expenditure to the tune of Rs 30 lakh is required in the next couple of years. It includes coaching fees, travelling and sports gear plus equipment expenses,” said the father, adding that at present, Salsa gets scholarship from MSLTA (Maharashtra State Lawn Tennis Association) under Vision Programme, which is partially sponsored by Yonex for sports gear/equipment. Asked about her icon, she said, “It is tennis star Garbine Muguruza. I follow her game style a lot. In fact, my game is a lot like hers.”