It was the year 2008 when an eight-year-old girl was standing outside a playground in Odisha and a group of players were running behind an egg-shaped ball.
That girl was watching rugby for the first time at that time and she was Sumitra Nayak For rugby who is today an important player of India’s national women’s rugby team.
However, when Sumitra started playing the game at the Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences in Bhubaneswar, she was very young and she had seen very difficult days in the beginning of her life.
Initial challenges
Sumitra was born on 8 March 2000 in Duburi village in Jajpur district of Odisha, but her mother left the village with her three children as her husband used to beat her.
His father once tried to burn his family alive, but all of them survived.
Restless with all these circumstances, his mother wanted to keep her children separate from this environment and raise them. After this Sumitra was admitted to the Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences in the fourth grade.
In this institute, the children of tribal communities are given free education and training.
Sumitra’s mother runs a beauty parlor. She knew nothing about rugby and once she saw all the players falling on each other, she was worried about her daughter.
But Sumitra persuaded her mother and said that she is taught different techniques to take care of herself.
Sumitra Nayak For rugby says that she continued her game and she reached here because her mother had shown courage at that time.
When landed
Sumitra started earning a name in rugby as soon as he got on the field and heaped the medals.
This was the time when every game was giving a new learning experience and it also gave them an opportunity to improve their game.
In 2016, he was selected in the country’s national team and won a bronze medal in the Dubai Asian Championship (Under-18).
Sumitra, who hails from Odisha, says that she loves playing on foreign soil because she gets to meet a lot of people and learn from them.
The Asia Women’s Rugby Championship in 2019 was a very special tournament for him and the Indian team as 15 players were included instead of the usual seven in the team.
The team faced the challenges very well and the team succeeded in winning the bronze medal.
What is the goal
Sumitra wants the Indian team to improve their rankings in Asia from 9/10 to five and participate in the Olympic Games.
This young player thinks that girls should have the freedom to take their decisions because even today the decisions of the girls take their relatives.
She says that girls should not be seen as inferior to boys, and family needs to change this thinking before changing society.
Although there has been no problem of education and training for Sumitra, but she believes that rugby is still difficult to make a career because it cannot provide a job nor does it have any major rewards.
She says that the Indian government has not even recognized the sport yet.
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