Bhanu: High rise

Ranchi, April 10: It?s a story of smashing success, quite literally, with which Bhanu Prasad, a Ranchi girl, has scripted a new chapter of sporting achievement for Jharkhand.

Bhanu has been appointed as the coach and a selector of the senior national volleyball team that will participate in the Princess Cup, the Asian volleyball championship, to be held in Bangkok from June 6.

She is the first women volleyball player and coach from the state to have scaled such heights in the national circuit.

Bhanu?s rise has been quite meteoric as it was only a about a year ago that she was made the coach of the national junior volleyball team for the Youth Asiad Volleyball Tournament at Manila in Phillipines.

Bhanu took to volleyball when she was a student at Ranchi University. Besides representing the university volleyball team for four consecutive years, she was also a regular face of the state team in erstwhile Bihar.

However, the prudent planner that she was, Bhanu did not rest on her laurels as a spiker and joined the the National Institute of Sports, Calcutta, from where she graduated as a coach in 1987.

Thereafter, she started working in Uttar Pradesh as an assistant sports officer in Lucknow. Under her able guidance, the Uttar Pradesh women?s team won the east zone crown as well as the senior national volleyball championship.

Her mentor and coach Shekhar Bose, himself a senior official of the National Volleyball federation, was quite elated at Bhanu?s success.

?She was among the first batch of girl trainees at the Union Club when she was just about 11 or 12 years old. But she was a very good player and has done well to take up coaching,? Bose said, adding that her stint with the senior national team with chief coach Mahamaya and assistant coach Chandan Sen will help in sharpening her coaching skills.

Bhanu has also cleared the second grade examination of the International Volleyball Federation.

Bhanu?s proteges have also lived up to the standards of excellence set by her. Two of her trainees, Poonam Choudhary and Nazia Khan, have been selected for the two stage selection-cum-coaching camp of the senior national team. Poonam, in fact, has already represented the national team in Sri Lanka and Russia last year.