Who says that Sports and academics cannot go together? Today, majority of the parents keep their children away from sports, especially during Xth and XII th Board exams. But, there are few exceptions in the form of Sandeep Ghosh and his wife Saswati Ghosh , who encouraged their daughter Swastika to continue with Table Tennis at the international level even while studying in Xth class.
At the beginning of this calendar year Swastika had improved her World ranking in Junior Girls climbing up to 23rd rank. She has not taken a break from Table Tennis during this acedemic year 2018-19 and has participated in all important tournaments abroad. A month before her CBSE Board exams, she was asked to represent India at the Bahrain Open, where she won medals and also improved her ranking to 19th in the World. After her return, Swastika had just 20 days to prepare for her Xth CBSE Board exams. But, she worked hard and focused all her attention on her studies. She studied late night hours . Thanks to her mother Saswati Ghosh for boosting her morale. However, she never forgot her TT practice session with her father cum Coach Sandeep Ghosh. She also found time for the same, though it was reduced by an hour.
A month later, she had a good news in the form of results securing 1st Class with 64% marks. And this was a big achievement for the 15 year old girl from Ramsheth Thakur Public School, Kharghar, Navi Mumbai. Swastika is thankful to her school authorities for the encouragement and support and also their Family friend cum teacher Ms. Manju Anand who helped her a lot in subjects like social studies, English and Hindi .