With BOSM approaching, Rakshita Pandey, the Captain of the girls’ table tennis team, sat down with the BOSM English Press to talk about the team’s preparation for the upcoming fest.
She stated that the table tennis team would compete in two events during BOSM, single matches and team matches, both conducted in a best-of-five format. She revealed that the team initially only practised during the evening from 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM, but they had also introduced morning practices from 6:30 AM to 8:00 AM. As the week before BOSM contained a lot of holidays, the team planned to further extend morning practice.
Rakshita felt that Delhi University (DU) colleges, like Hansraj and SRCC, as well as the Jaipur Engineering College, were their major competition for the sport in previous editions of BOSM. When asked about the team’s previous performance, she noted that the team had won a gold in the singles event in the last edition of BOSM, and a bronze in the team event the year before that.
She added that the team had faced one notable challenge, as they had initially received a relatively inexperienced coach, and had to formally issue a complaint to get the coach changed. She remarked that the new coach was ‘really good’, but that he had been assigned only 20 days before BOSM, giving the team significantly less time to prepare. On selecting new members for the team, Rakshita reported that there was a significant increase in the turnout of girls for table tennis selections, but given the team’s already large roster, they could only bring three new members into the fold. She did express some disappointment about the decreasing quality of team members, noting that they had a national player last year, but expressed optimism about the performance of the team, stating that they were improving fast under the new coach.
She commented that being a Captain had been hectic, but it had significantly improved her performance in the sport, as she had started attending more practice sessions. Additionally, it allowed her to bond with other team members to a much greater extent. Talking about her experience with the CoSSAc, she said that she was glad that they had been prompt with the urgently needed inventory, but noted that some of their less vital inventory had not yet arrived, as close as a week before BOSM.
On a parting note, she encouraged the readers to attend all their table tennis matches, even though they would be conducted in a small SAC room. She justified this by adding that table tennis was an extremely exciting sport to watch once you understood the rules.