Few teens are as conscious and clear about the road ahead as Jennifer Luikham (11). Born in Ukhrul district of Manipur, Jennifer moved to Gurgaon in 2005 with her family, and first picked up a tennis racquet in 2006.
These days Jennifer — a class VII student of The Heritage School, Gurgaon — starts her daily schedule at the crack of dawn with two hours of tennis practice followed by a series of fitness drills at the TEAM Tennis Academy within the DDA Siri Fort Sports Complex (Delhi) under the watchful eye of ace coach Aditya Sachdeva, who mentored the 2009 Australian Open Boys’ champion and former world No.1 junior, Yuki Bhambri.
Jennifer started playing competitive tennis in her very first year at the Palms Club, Gurgaon, making a clean sweep of all Under-10 titles in 2006. Consequently in December 2007, she was one of 15 children countrywide selected under the Mission 2018 programme of Mahesh Bhupathi which necessitated relocation to Bangalore, where she trained at the Mahesh Bhupathi Tennis Village from 2008-10. After the programme was discontinued in 2010, Jennifer returned to Gurgaon and began competing in All- India Tennis Association (AITA) events.
Jennifer won her first U-12 title at the AITA Talent Series Championship held in Chandigarh in July 2010. The following month, this energetic ward of steel industry professional Nishith Sharma, swept all AITA tournaments in the national capital region of Delhi in the U-12 and U-14 categories. On October 1 last year just two days shy of her 11th birthday, Jennifer scored a double in the AITA tournament staged in Vasant Kunj, Delhi winning the girls’ singles title in both U-14 and U-16 categories.
In recognition of her potential, Jennifer has bagged long-term sponsorship contracts with sports footwear giant Adidas (USA) and sportswear manufacturer Babolat (France). “An international standard tennis player must have a good head and strong legs. Jennifer has great reserves of energy and strong legs which enable her to run down balls even in the third set,” says coach Sachdeva.
This gritty pre-teen, who admires Federer’s game and Maria Sharapova’s style, is firmly focused on her goals. “I am working towards entering the top five in the U-12 and top ten in the U-14 national categories by the end of 2011. In the next two years, I hope to play an International Tennis Federation tourn-ament and turn professional within five years,” says Jennifer.
Wind beneath your wings!
Payal Mahajan (Delhi)
Shiksha Chopra & Akshata Jain
Shiksha Chopra (8) and Akshata Jain (9), students of Billabong High International School, Malad (W), Mumbai, have won laurels for their school and parents by virtue of being ranked among the top 10 (ninth and tenth) in the third MaRRS International Spelling Bee Competition held at the Nexus International School, Malaysia in February. The competition attracted participation from 500 children inter-nationally. The duo was awarded certificates, a trophy and prize money of US$ 222 (Rs.9,897) each. The MaRRS Spelling Bee is a competition for school children in which they are assessed for English language spelling, pronun-ciation and word usage skills.
The daughter of Rohit Kishore Chopra, chief legal officer at Balaji Telefilms, and Shivina Chopra, also a lawyer, Shiksha is described by her parents as a “self-motivated and independent child with a creative bent of mind”. Already a budding poet, she is also a competent flautist, sprinter (200 metres), a martial arts yellow belt and classical dancer with four public performances to her credit.
On the other hand, Akshata is more science oriented. Last year she was ranked among the top 25 students country-wide in the National Science Talent Search Examination and topped science and maths in the ASSET examination 2010, an annual learning assessment test conducted by the Ahmedabad-based Educational Initiatives (EI). “She is not inclined towards sports but has always done well in academics. Therefore her excellent showing in the MaRRS Spelling Bee Competition isn’t a great surprise. She reads newspapers, maga-zines and books very meticulously,” says Amit Jain, Akshata’s father and chief financial officer at Graviss Group Pvt. Ltd.
“This is the first time I have won prizes in a competition. I am very lucky to have made it. It was a very exciting experience,” says Akshata.
For Billabong High’s principal Kusum Kanwar, the girls’ achievements have come as a pleasant surprise. “We don’t particularly stress spelling capability in our school, but we encourage our children to do supplementary reading. We advise them to read at least two current novels in a year to improve their vocabulary and strengthen their English,” says Kanwar.
Quite obviously sound advice.
Manas Shrivastava (Mumbai)