Shuttling to Success

Salute Her
Prachi Naidu, who travels everyday from Lonavla to practice at ClubSo-laris, savours her first round under-12 win

Suhrid Barua, Pune Mirror, January 30, 2009

A first round victory in the under-12 category may not catapult her toin-stant stardom, but for ten-year-old Prachi Naidu, it was a winworth sa-vouring about.Nothing more can accentuate Prachi's desire to make it big in thesport than the fact that the fifth standard student of Auxilum Convent School, travels every day from Lonavla to hone her skills atthe Club Solaris courts. Her mother, Sandhya, a former na-tional kabaddi player for MadhyaPradesh, does all the spadework of bringing her kid everyday. "Weengage in four hours of travel five days a week to ensure her hertraining is not af-fected. I take a local train at 4.15 pm and reach Solaris at around 5.30 pm and she trains her for two hours till 7.30pm," Sandhya said, swelling with pride after her daugher brushed aside Brahamine Pingle 8-2.
For the record, Prachi took up tennis only six months back. What lends Prachi's win a special touch is the fact that the youngster took her unit test exams in the morning before dashing off to the venue with her mother. "Prachi gave her exams in the morn-ing from 8.30 am to10.30 am and then we took a local train at 11.00 pm and reached thevenue at 1.00 pm for the match. Prachi, for her part, feels it was her consistency wore downBrahamine. "I was ripping winners consistently which was beginning tounsettle her. The nerves got to her and she started hitting the net often which helped my cause," she fired a parting shot.