11Even Sports and Khar Gymkhana had jointly organized a month long high performance Table Tennis Training camp for Junior players in Mumbai, under the supervision of North Korean Coach Jong Son An and national level Korean Player Jong Hyok Im. Today being the 22nd day of this camp, the hosts had invited media persons to witness the progress of these 28 young players and to interact with them.
All the participants pose for a photo along with their Coach, Asst Coach and kamlesh Mehta.
Eight times national champion Kamlesh Mehta who is also head of 11Even Sports, introduced few prominent juniors attending the camp, including Aslesha Trehan, Manasi Chiplunkar, Shaurya Pednekar, Dev Shroff , Hrishikesh Malhotra and all of them expressed their gratitude to their respected Coach, for working so hard on improvising their motor skills. The players did admit that playing in two sessions ( morning and afternoon) was tough, as they were required to undergo a lot of physical training, which they had never done before, besides playing their games with weekly matches. But, all of them appreciated the efforts taken by Kamlesh Sir, Rohotesh Haldar and all those four local coaches from Mumbai, namely Sachin Shetty, kalpesh Loke, Siddharth Falnikar and Gandeep Bhiwandkar, who also assisted the North Korean Coach.
North Korean Coach Jong Son An speaks…
While explaining in detail about the benefits derived by him, Hrishikesh Malhotra said, “This camp helped me a lot to improvise my speed and also my services, besides proper receiving of services, which is so important in this game.” Another top ranked junior from Mumbai, Dev Shroff also expressed his full satisfaction on conduct of this camp and assured his coach that he would do more better in the coming tournaments. Manasi Chiplunkar also said that now she can give her 100% , after undergoing training for past three weeks. Manasi’s father Mahendra Chiplunkar was also India ranked TT player .
Manasi Chiplunkar explains the benefits of this coaching
Ms. Roma, a former India ranked TT player also offered all the help to the players, with her physical presence during this camp. The children also attended a mind training session, which was part of this camp. This was conducted by Leena Haldar, a Holistic Practitioner and Emotional Freedom Techniques ( EFT) trainer. This particular session was also open to parents of these children and they were all praise for it.
To arrange special training to these Mumbai juniors by North Korean Coach, was the idea of Kamlesh Mehta, who persuaded TTFI Secretary general Mr. Dhanraj Choudhary to allow the Coach for this assignment in Mumbai, as he was already engaged by Table tennis Federation of India ( TTFI) . “When Mr. Choudhary agreed to my request, I immediately contacted Khar Gymkhana TT Secretary Rohitesh Haldar for making the venue of Khar Gymkhana available for this purpose and within two days, with the permission of Chairman and Managing Committee, he came up with a positive response. Then taking a decision to charge reasonable fees, we informed the parents of these children. The biggest problem was about their schools. But, their schools even agreed for relieving them for one month and that’s how we could organize this camp. Thanks to Ms. Vita Dani , Chairperson of 11Even Sports and Rohitesh Haldar of Khar Gymkhana, for making this venue available to us,” said kamlesh Mehta.
Speaking on this occasion, the Korean Coach did admit that there was some communication problem, as he spoke broken English, but appreciated the quick learning process of the young players, while implementing his suggestions. All these players will be seen in action during all the forthcoming tournaments, including Inter Schools nationals at Vadodara , followed by Cadet/Sub Junior and Junior/ Youth Nationals in January 2017. Sanil Shetty could attend this camp only for three days, but the feedback received from him was very important. He was benefitted a lot from this 3 day training, which he felt was equivalent to 15 days training. Sanil narrowly lost to Amalraj in the recently concluded East Zone All India finals.
All in all, we look forward to some big achievements from these players who are undergoing this training, as the Coach is very confident about their best performance in near future. Thanks to Kamlesh Mehta for taking this initiative.