PANAJI
Swimming is one of the few sports in which Goa has consistently done well at the national level. In the last decade and a half, the likes of Talasha Prabhu, Shrungi Bandekar, Xavier D’Souza, Sanjana Prabhugaonkar, Vihaan Pednekar have done the state proud by winning several medals at the nationals.
Infact, Talasha dominated the Indian swimming scene for quite some time. She was even the ‘Fastest Indian Female Swimmer’ for five years in a row between 2009 and 2013, an unprecedented feat for a Goan sportsperson.
Now, the baton has been passed to the next generation. In this year alone, Goa’s Purvi Naik, Aarohi Borde, Aryan Patil and Saksham Naik have won medals at the nationals. While Purvi won 4 medals (1 gold, 2 silver and 1 bronze) at the Sub-Junior Nationals held in Bhubaneshwar, Aarohi won 2 medals (1 gold and 1 silver) at the National School Games held in Rajkot, Saksham won 2 medals (2 silver) at the Kendriya Vidyalaya Nationals held in New Delhi and Aryan won a silver at the National School Games held in New Delhi earlier this year.
All these achievements have been possible only due to their super coach T.A. Sujith, a former international swimmer from Kerala, who is attached with the Khelo India Centre for Excellence at the Campal Swimming Pool Complex in Panaji since November 2022.
All the medal winning swimmers from Goa have also acknowledged this fact that had coach Sujith been not there, their timings would have never improved a lot and they would not have won national medal training under the existing coaches.
“Sujith Sir comes up new work-outs each time and has helped me a lot to improve upon my technique and timings,” said Aarohi Borde who won gold and silver at the National School Games held in Rajkot last month.
It’s a known fact that apart from Sujith, none of the coaches present in Goa are good enough to produce national medalists in swimming. That is one of the reasons as to why talented swimmers like Talasha Prabhu, Shrungi Bandekar, Sanjana Prabhugaonkar and Vihaan Pednekar had to move out of the state where the training facilities are much better.
“When I came in Goa for the first time in 2022, I was shocked to see very less number of swimmers over here. We prepared a strategy to train the kids. There were about 20 residential and 30 non-residential swimmers. We put them into one single batch and started providing training to them,” said the coach.
“During the state meet held earlier this year, there were only about 40-50 participants in all categories put together i.e. sub-junior, junior and senior category. This is very less. In some events, there were either 1 or 2 participants,” says Sujith rueing the lack of competition in Goa.
“Whereas in Bangalore, in one centre alone i.e. at the Basanvangudi Aquatic Centre, there are nearly about 3,000 swimmers and 60-70 coaches. In one event itself, there are about 40-50 participants. So, you can see how much competition is there. The more quantity we have, the better quality we will get. ” said the coach who has more 12 years of experience in coaching national level swimmers.
During his prime, Sujith was one of India’s top swimmers and had won five gold medals during South Asian Games at Islamabad, Pakistan in 2004.
Whatever Sujith has done for the sport in Goa is worth appreciating, for the simple reason that from a small talent pool of only about 50 swimmers, he has been able to produce 4 national medal winning swimmers from Goa this year alone and another boy Assam’s Dhiman Kashyap who also trains under him as part of Khelo India program also won national medal at the Kendriya Vidyalaya Nationals held in New Delhi earlier this year.
If Goan sports have to improve, then the state badly needs quality coaches like T.A. Sujith not just in swimming but in other sports as well.
