Skate away
Selection of the state roller skating team for the All-India Championship was held recently at Cambridge School in Cuttack. Around 40 boys and girls from Bhubaneswar, Berhampur, Cuttack and Sambalpur took part in the selection process. It was conducted by national referees Amit Ghadei and Nimish Sharma. India coach Amit Sharma attended the event as an observer. The participants, who made the final cut for the tournament to be held in Pune from January 15 to 20, are
J. Anish, Manish Nayak, Harshavardhan Tiwari, Aditya Pattnaik, Pritish Aryan Jena, Dibyans Mehera and Md Sayan Salad.
Smash & jab
The Odisha State Table Tennis Association has sent a team to represent the state for the 77th Senior Inter-state and National Table Tennis Championship, which began at Kotla Vijay Bhaskar Reddy Indoor Stadium in Hyderabad from January 5 and will continue till January 16. The players include Tousif Haque, Bikash Singh, Saswat Samal, Sagar Ghatge, Md Azhar, Md Yunus, Ananya Basak, Samartha Prusty, Poushali Ghatak and Ankita Senapati. S.Subramaniam is the coach-cum-manager, while Tapan Kha joined the squad as a referee.
Record-breakers
In the 63rd Odisha State Athletics Meet, sprinter Amiya Kumar Mallick grabbed the gold medal in the men's 200-metres by clocking 21.6 seconds and bagged the best athlete award. The meet was hosted at the Barabati Stadium in Cuttack. Earlier, Amiya won the 100-metres by breaking the earlier record with a timing of 10.4 seconds. Among the participating districts, Cuttack emerged overall winners, while Sundargarh came second. Manoj Kumar Maharana of Ganjam district broke the men’s discus throw state record with an
impressive effort of 46.50 metres.
Proud powerlifters
The 18-member Odisha squad bagged eight medals at the National Junior and Master Powerlifting Championship, which was held in Jamshedpur from December 29 to 31. The medals included five golds and three silvers. Odisha was also declared the overall champion in the boys’ group.
Serve & volley
Top seed Amrutjay Mohanty from Odisha won the boys under-14 singles final in SSTC-AITA Championship Series tournament held at Serampore near Calcutta. He defeated his state mate Abhishek Mohapatra 6-1,6-4 in the initial rounds. Mohapatra was seeded sixth. In the semi-final, Amrutjay Mohanty beat Sreem Sadhukhan of Bengal by 6-4, 4-6, 6-2. Abhishek reached the final by defeating second seed Amaan Wasim of Bengal in the quarter-final and third seed Kanav Goel also from Bengal in semi-final. In another super series tennis tournament for under-14 and under-16 (boys & girls) at Ahmedabad, Kabir Hans from Odisha reached the semi-final of the boys under-14 singles by defeating 3rd seed Rajesh Kannan of Tamil Nadu by 6-2, 6-3 in quarter-final. In the girls’ under-16 singles, Rutuparna Choudhary reached the semi-final by defeating S. Rao of Tamil Nadu 6-1,6-1.
Dribble & score
In the 21st Senior Women’s National Football Championship, (East Zone), Odia women saw back-to-back wins. Odisha won against Uttar Pradesh 5-0 on January 2. In their match against Tamil Nadu, the Odisha team won 4-1 on Monday. Pyari Xaxa, winner of the 2015 All-India Football Federation’s (AIFF) Emerging Woman Footballer of the Year, struck the first goal, while Sakina Nisa scored a brace and Jasmani Samad scored the final goal. The state team will take on Goa on January 8.
In another development, the Football Association of Odisha (FAO) has announced that the Sahani Cup Senior Men’s Inter-District Football Championship will be jointly organised by the district athletic associations of Bargarh and Sambalpur. It has also been decided that the Senior Women’s Inter-District Championship for the P.C. Behera Trophy will be held in Sambalpur, while the Inter-District Club Championship (Kalinga Cup qualifying round) will be hosted by Sundargarh. Some matches of the Kalinga Cup will also be held in Balangir.
