MARGAO
For any sport to flourish infrastructure and good coaches is of prime importance. Keeping that in mind the recently elected Goa State Tennis Association has sent upon the task of setting in place a good coaching set up and also looking forward to building and maintaining more tennis courts in the state.
In order to overcome the lack of tennis courts and coaches in the state, GSTA has a few things which they will set in motion in the coming months.
“We at GSTA are pushing for new tennis courts across Goa and will conduct classes in Goa to certify new individuals as certified coaches. For this, we are already in touch with AITA and will hold the classes in October and November of this year, which will be an ongoing exercise,” said Sameer Kakodkar.
This will be the first time ever that certification classes will be conducted in Goa.
As of now only two Goan-based coaches have certification
Valentine D’Silva who is a Level 4 coach and Santosh Gorawar who has a Level 1 certificate.
Another Deepak Nahak, who was one of the coaches at the National Games does not have certification but Kakaodkar praised his work and also who are training and coaching players all over the State.
“Deepak is doing excellent work by setting up the Tennis Academy training facility at Salvador de Mundo and others are doing good work in Margao, Panjim and other places,” he added.
GSTA, he said is poised to lead the association into a new era of growth and development and will organise state-level and national-level tournaments to foster competitive spirit and implement training programmes to nurture young talent.
The recently elected committee of the GSTA comprises Sameer Kakodkar, president; Sachin Dukle, secretary; Rohan Kamat, treasurer; Santosh Fondekar, vice-president; Raju Paiginkar, vice -resident. The Association’s committee members include Nikunj Gupta, Shivan Desai, Anurag Agrawal, Rajan Bandekar, Ben Saldanha, Laxman Iyer, Jude Mascarenhas, and Sanket Nayak.
