A member of the Indian women’s hockey team that claimed a historic fourth place in the Tokyo Olympics, forward Navneet Kaur says it was her father’s tireless efforts that helped her play for the national team.
“Since childhood, I was very interested in sports. My father wanted me to become a cricketer, but there was no cricket in my hometown of Shahabad.”
“There was a school in front of my house where hockey was played and from there I started playing the game.
“My father, who worked in a TV repairing shop, put in a lot of effort to help me reach the Indian team.”
The 26-year-old from Haryana scored a late goal to help India beat Ireland 1-0 in the group stage and keep his hopes of making the quarter-finals at last year’s Olympics alive.
Navneet was in splits when he converted a penalty stroke to help India win a bronze in the 2013 Junior World Cup.
“Junior World Cup 2013 was the biggest tournament for me when I joined the junior Indian women’s team. It was a very good tournament for me. We won the bronze medal by winning the shoot-out and I scored in the shoot-out as well.”
“A lot of players from that Indian junior team are playing together in the current senior India team. It was really nice to play with the same players for so many years.”
His Indian teammate Neha also spoke about the challenges he faced on his way to represent India and stressed on the importance of his mother in his life.
“When I started playing hockey, I faced a lot of challenges. A friend of mine in school had asked me to start playing hockey and the friend also took me to the field.”
“I started playing only because we were given shoes and clothes. And since then I have been practicing at the Hockey Academy in Sonepat. My coach and my mother have supported me a lot. My mother has struggled a lot to reach where I am today.”
Neha also said that the Indian team did well in the Tokyo Olympics as the team worked hard on their fitness.
“We were very happy when we won the gold medal in the Women’s Asia Cup 2017. After that, our confidence gradually increased and we kept on improving our performance too,” she said.
“We also focused on improving our fitness. Then we played well in FIH Hockey Olympic Qualifiers 2019 and then we did well in Tokyo Olympics. We were able to do well in the Olympics because we had improved our fitness.
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