There is no doubt that sports have no future in our country except for Cricket and a couple of more games. There are several hundreds of stories where the sportsman living low standard life with very limited resources. The story of 23-Year-Old Ritu is no different. Being a School Nationals Boxing Medalist, today she works as a Parking Lot attendant on daily wages.
When you meet someone, be kind and greet them with a gentle smile, be it a stranger, friend, or worker. You never know what inner battles one is going through in their lives! While we can’t judge anyone’s life by seeing their work, we should rather just be kind.
Ritu, who is a young boxer from Chandigarh faces the hardships of being a sportsperson in our country. This 23-year-old Boxer has been an excellent boxer from her school days but had to quit her passion because of personal problems. She has been a promising boxing player and has won a bronze medal in the National School Boxing Championship.
Today she works as a Parking Attendant. She earns for her family as she gets her daily wage by issuing parking slips at a parking area in the city’s Shastri Park area.
About quitting her passion and not pursuing sports as a career, she said, “My father fell ill and could not work anymore. I had to work on daily wages to support the family. I asked for help from my sports teacher but he said that it was difficult to get support to play at a senior level,”
Today, it’s the athletes and sportspersons who bring the name of India to higher levels. There is a lot of talent in our country, most of which is not acknowledged. Such talented people should probably get special schemes through the government for financial assistance. There should be ways by which people can contribute and help people like Ritu.
“It’s the negligence of school authorities and they should have sent the player to specialized coaching centers of the UT Administration. Such players are supported free of cost at such centres and when players win medals at the Boxing India or Boxing Chandigarh competitions, they are given preference to the jobs too,” said the player.
While this being said, all we can say is that being a sportsperson in a country like India is difficult. And if you are someone looking forward to pursuing a career in sports, go ahead, forget the fear and live the dream. We salute all our sportspersons and with time have gained more and more respect for each one of them.
In her school, she started boxing at the insistence of Paramjeet Singh, a Physical education teacher at the Government Girls Senior Secondary School. In the year 2015, Ritu was enrolled in wrestling at the school and won a gold in the 63 kg category inter-school competition held by UT Administration in 2016, besides winning a silver in the Open Inter-School Tournament the same year.
She had also claimed a bronze in the 63 kg category in boxing in the School Nationals Games held by the School Federation of India at Telangana. In this tournament itself, she was a part of Volleyball and Boxing in her school team.
It’s her responsibility to help her family in difficult times. But if given a chance to continue her career as a Boxer, she is ready to work towards it. She also feels that if she gets help from the authorities, she would be able to fulfill her desire to play for the country and win a medal in the sport in the Olympics.
Reminiscing about her school days, Ritu said “Whatever I played, I could play during those three years in school. Once I had to quit school in 2017, the sport stopped for me. I have good memories of playing in school nationals. If I had got support at that time, I would have continued. I could not play in the Chandigarh State or the nationals held by Boxing Chandigarh and Boxing Federation of India as I did not have a coach or proper training,”
