On A Mission: Soma focuses on undiscovered talents in village

RANAGHAT (West Bengal): Soma Biswas, one of the iconic women athletes from India and Bengal, has dedicated her life in churning out talents from her village Debagram Mondol Pukuria Para in Nadia district, some 85 kilometers away from Kolkata.

Biswas, a silver medallist in heptathlon at the 2002 Busan and 2006 Doha Asian Games, told khelupdates, “Whatever I’m today is because of athletics. My goal is to give something back to the society and my country and state. That’s why I’ve taken up this responsibility.”

Following her retirement, the former Bengal athlete decided to change the lack in sports system and envisioned an institute dedicated to advancing promotion of heptathlete.

The 41-year-old has her proposed academy on paper, but due to lack of funds nothing concrete has been done.

Biswas’s target is to convert her dream into reality. She has already procured 3.61 acres land for Soma School of Sports.

Her focus rested on those undiscovered talents, who could be chiselled with intensive training to achieve exceptional results.

“I want to produce more Soma Biswas from my village. That’s my target and dream,” she said.

Barren land, hard work and determination

Presently around 80 trainees receive training on a barren land, but 12 of them have already competed at the national level while 25 in state competitions.

There’s a temporary club house on one side of the field. She wants to develop into a modern structure with a gymnasium, meeting room, canteen and separate dressing rooms for boys and girls.

“There is immense potential. If they get professional training and facilities they can become future stars,” she added.

Juma Basu one of her students has won a silver medal in discus at the 2017 Senior Inter-State Athletic meet.

Biswas has formed an advisory board which includes former international footballer Gautam Sarkar, boxer Mohammad Ali Qamar, athlete Sanjay Rai, paddlers Harishankar Roy and Saurav Chakraborty, Biswajit Palit (kabaddi) and weightlifter Sumita Laha.

But Biswas is hard pressed with time as she has to balance between job and passion.

Her employment with the Indian Railways restricts her movement. It’s only in the weekends that she drives down to her village to trains her students.

She knows this isn’t enough, but she’s helpless.

Getting sponsors major hurdle

Her academy has received INR 400,000 as grant from the state government, but that doesn’t seem to be enough to raise a professional training centre.

Bengal lacks modern infrastructure. The only good one is at the SAI Eastern Centre in Kolkata.

Soma Biswas

“Bengal’s rural areas has a lot of talented girls and boys, but due to lack of training facilities the focus is lost. I’m only trying to do something in my limited capabilities,” added Biswas.

Giving right direction

Without blaming anyone, she wants to dedicate her time and energy on giving her students a direction with the help of Sameer Bera and Subhashis Biswas.

“I’ve dreams, but no money,” said the former athlete, who also understands motivation is important for these poor athletes.

“Finding no motivation to pursue a career in athletics, they’re are quitting the sport. You can’t blame them at all,” rued Biswas.

The Arjuna awardee has taken up this project as a challenge.

“My appeal to the sponsors, ‘Give me two years, I’ll give you four champions from this academy’. You can say, ‘this is my confidence,” she signed off.