Category: Sports

Punjab Sports & Cultural Club Organizes Kabaddi and Volleyball Tournaments in Chicago

Ajay GhoshSports 0

Chicago IL : Punjabi sports lovers from the States of Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Ohio turned out, in huge numbers, to enjoy Kabaddi and Vollyball Tournaments, followed by a vibrant cultural program. The event was organized by Punjab Sports & Cultural Club at Elk Grove Village, Forest Preserve grounds in Chicago.

In the Kabaddi Cup Tournament, there were three Teams from India, USA, and Canada. In the final match, USA Kabaddi Team defeated the Indian Team by scoring 38 points against 19 and won the first prize. The second prize went to the Indian Team.

The first prize of $13,000 was sponsored by prominent businessman, Darshan Singh Dhaliwal from Milwaukee, in the memory of his father, late Subedar Kartar Singh Dhaliwal. The second prize of $11,000 was sponsored by the host Punjab Sports & Cultural Club.

The people watched the Kabaddi Tournament with great enthusiasm, as Kabaddi  is affectionately called the mother of all sports in Punjab. In the Volleyball Tournament, Shaheed Bhagat Singh Sports Club won the first prize of $1500 and Glenview Spykar, the second prize of $1100.

Raja Krishan Murti, the candidate for US Congress, in his address, appreciated the efforts of the Punjab Sports & Cultural Club in promoting love for sports among the people of Punjab. He urged the young generation to give up their sedentary life style. He called upon them to take active interest in their physical fitness and eat healthy food.

Murthi also appealed to the audience to support him in the ensuing Congress elections and give him an opportunity to serve them. OP Meena, Consul at the Consulate General of India in Chicago, who also spoke on the occasion, said that the love for sports among people of Punjab should be a source of inspiration to their counterparts from other parts of India. “This would go a long way in enriching the culture of physical fitness and enabling people to lead a happy life”, he added.

In the evening, the popular singers, Harbhjan Mann and Gursewak Mann, entertained the audience for more than two hours with their hit Punjabi folk songs. The people thoroughly enjoyed the cultural program and many of them, especially youngsters, were seen dancing energetically to the melodious tunes.

Typical Punjabi food, coupled with hot tea, was served throughout the day to the spectators, free of cost. The weather, which was highly pleasant, was instrumental not only in attracting people but also in retaining them throughout the tournament.

Harvinder Singh, President of the Club, Amrik Singh (Amar Carpet), Finance Secretary & Media In-charge, Happy Heer, Jaskaran Singh Dhaliwal, Lovedeep Singh Dulat, Narinder Singh Sra, Gian Singh Seehra, Gurmeet Singh Bhola, Rajinder Singh Dyal, Manminder Singh Heer, Lucky Sahota and Swaran Singh Sidhu, Board Members of the Club, contributed their best efforts in making the event a grand success.

Aasif Mandvi Among Asia Society’s ‘2015 Asia Game Changers’

Ajay GhoshSports 0

Aasif Mandvi, an Indian American comedian and two Indian entrepreneurs are among Asia Society’s “2015 Asia Game Changers” as per a press release issued here on September 16th.

The list of eight ‘Game Changers’ were recognized for making a transformative and positive difference for the future of Asia and the world.

Indian American comedian, activist and spokesman for Muslims and Asian Americans Aasif Mandvi received one of the honors. Asia Society recognized Mandvi as a ‘Game Changer’ for using comedy to challenge perceptions and work for good. Mandvi initially gained popularity in 2006 as the senior Middle East correspondent on Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” where he seized the spotlight to become a powerful spokesperson for Muslims and Asian Americans.

Originally from Mumbai, Mandvi grew up in England and Florida before moving to New York to pursue acting. As his fame rose, Mandvi challenged stereotypes and provided a voice for Muslim Americans, changing the game in terms of how Asians are viewed on television.

In 2015, he co-wrote, produced and acted in the Web series “Halal in the Family” for the popular comedy site Funny or Die, using the sitcom format to tackle Islamophobia. Outside of acting, Mandvi is an advocate for a number of charity organizations such as Relief 4 Pakistan, Partners In Health and Planting Peace.

Industrial Credit and Investment Corporation of India Bank CEO Chanda Kochhar is the first woman to head an Indian bank and was honored for transforming an industry and empowering the masses, according to Asia Society. She was just 22 years old when she joined ICICI Bank as a management trainee in 1984. By the time she was 47, she was the bank’s CEO. Not only did she make history by becoming the first woman to lead an Indian bank, she also transformed the entire Indian retail banking industry.

Under Kochhar’s leadership, ICICI Bank has achieved great milestones year-after-year by expanding its businesses, leveraging technology to bring value to its urban and rural customers, and partnering with the public and private sectors to create new opportunities. While inspiring many young women, Kochhar has racked up numerous awards and accolades, including the Padma Bhushan, one of India’s highest civilian honors, in 2011; being featured in Time’s “100 Most Influential People in the World” in 2015; ranking 36th on the Forbes “World’s 100 Most Powerful Women” in 2015; and ranking second in Fortune India’s list of “Most Powerful Women in Business” in 2014.

Kiran Bir Sethi, the founder of Design for Change and The Riverside School, was honored for empowering children to change the world. The society said Sethi is the champion of youth volunteerism. Sethi noticed that teachers rigidly stuck to the textbooks and punished students who deviated from the prescribed lesson plan when her son was in school in Ahmedabad. Noticing this issue, she founded The Riverside School in Ahmedabad in 2001 to provide an alternative model which focuses on quality of learning, student well-being and empathy in education.

Sethi used one lesson to have children roll incense sticks for several hours, which led to the children pushing for child labor to be abolished. The teaching methods have resulted in Riverside rivaling India’s top schools on national assessment scores in math, English and science.

In 2009, Sethi expanded on the principles practiced at Riverside to found the “Design for Change” movement with the goal of getting children to drive change in their communities.

The movement to encourage youth volunteerism, which has since spread to more than 300,000 children in 35 countries, is based on a simple model of having kids act on changing problems that bother them.

The “Asia Game Changer of the Year” award went to Philippine boxer Manny Pacquiao. He is a member of the Philippines House of Representatives and was awarded this highest honor for using his sport and fame for good. “This year’s honorees could not be more different from one another,” said Asia Society president Josette Sheeran in a statement. “What they share in common is that they all fight for a better today and inspire the world to do things differently.”

The group of ‘Game Changers’ were selected through a global survey of more than 1,000 leaders. They will be recognized formally for their honors at an Oct. 13 event at the United Nations.

Sania Mirza ends U.S. Open with doubles title

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Top seeds Martina Hingis and Sania Mirza beat Casey Dellacqua and Yaroslava Shvedova to win the U.S. Open doubles title on Sunday, September 13, 2015 and cap off a perfect visit to Flushing Meadows, New York.

At 34 years old and already a member of the International Tennis Hall of Fame, Hingis paired with  Sania Mirza of India to beat Casey Dellacqua of Australia and Yaroslava Shvedova of Kazakhstan 6-3, 6-3 in the final.

Hingis, the Swiss former-world number one and her Indian partner Mirza, tore through the doubles tournament without dropping a set to claim back-to-back grand slams after their victory at Wimbledon.

It has been a productive and busy visit to New York for Hingis who also captured the U.S. Open mixed doubles title with India’s Leander Paes.

Having only joined forces in March, Mirza and Hingis have enjoyed a successful partnership reaching six finals in 12 events and winning two majors.

After easily taking the first set Hingis and Mirza broke to open the second and apart from a late wobble were never really threatened by the Australian Dellacqua and Kazakhstan’s Shvedova.

For Hingis it was her second U.S. Open doubles title coming 17-years after she won her first in 1998 with Jana Novotna.

“With all the pressure on us, all the time, we’re really happy to come through,” Mirza said. Mirza thinks her victory will be a big deal back home in India. “It has been a great year for us,” Mirza said.

“To win Wimbledon was a great year. Then to come back and back it up to win the US Open, we feel like we’re a really solid team. And we came through again today. Grand Slams mean a lot, but obviously being a woman and being the first one to be able to achieve everything that I’m achieving is amazing for, not just India, for Indian women, but for Indian sports, for women to pick up sports in the country and that side of the world,” she said. “So I hope they’re proud.”

Natasha Subhash Earns Qualifying Spot at U.S. Open

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Natasha Subhash, an Indian American teen is taking the tennis world by storm. Natasha Subhash, a resident of Fairfax, Virginia, has got a wild card in the 2015 US Open Tennis Championships, becoming the youngest ever Indian-origin player to play for the Junior girls title in a Grand Slam event. Subhash will have her first taste of elite tennis when she heads to the U.S. Open in New York for the qualifying tournament this month. She is not nervous, though, but rather the opposite. “I am very excited for it.”

At just 14 years old, Subhash, of Fairfax, Va., has earned a spot in the U.S. Open, a grand slam tennis tournament in New York. The tennis sensation has been playing the sport for a long time. Her parents enrolled her in classes at the nearby Four Star Tennis Academy when she was just 4 years old, and she has been honing her craft there ever since.

“As soon as I started to compete in tournaments, I knew that this was what I wanted to do,” Subhash told the media. “I think that once I started to compete in tournaments on a regular basis and started doing well in them, I knew that I could be really good at this,” she said.

It didn’t take long for her natural talent to come through, and she felt confident that she would be a great player. In her U-16 age group, Subhash is ranked No. 1 in the Virginia and Mid-Atlantic regions, as well as in the United States Tennis Association standings. Nationally, she is ranked No. 5. of all young girls in the world; the International Tennis Federation ranks Subhash 1,118.

In total, Subhash said she has won around 150 trophies, including 10 gold, silver and bronze tennis balls, for her successes at national tournaments. She is a humble winner, too, earning the Sportsmanship Award at the National Hard Court Championships.

“I usually don’t think about that, because I have to focus on what I have to do in the match,” Subhash said. “But, it’s always nice to know that you have support when you’re playing.” Like a true competitor, Subhash appreciates past success but is driven to get better each and every day.

“My goals now are to just get better every day and to love what I do,” said the young tennis star, who will be attending Falls Church High School in Falls Church, Va., this fall. “My long-term goal is to see if I can be a professional tennis player.”

Subhash was born in Washington, D.C., to parents who immigrated to the United States from India. When she’s not dominating on the tennis court, she loves to read, listen to music and spend time with her friends. She credits her parents and their roots for making her the person she is today. “That has shaped me a lot as a person,” Subhash said of her parents being raised in India. “They’ve taught me all of their values and beliefs, and I couldn’t be more thankful.”

Indian Athletes Nab 173 Medals at Special Olympics Games, 3rd in Medal Tally

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Hundreds of Indian athletes were welcomed to the United States for the 2015 Special Olympics World Summer Games held in Los Angeles, and they will head back home having earned 173 medals, including 47 gold medals. (See separate story on two Indian American athletes who also competed in the Special Olympics, one of whom took home four medals for the U.S.)

India finished behind only the United States and China for total medals at the Games, which featured 177 countries and were held from July 25 through Aug. 2.

The Special Olympics, meant for people with intellectual disabilities, have been held since 1968

Some 6,500 athletes took part in contests ranging from weightlifting and athletics, to football and golf.

India’s 173 medals is a feat that is even more impressive in light of the fact that the infrastructure and attitude towards both disability and sport in India is — to put it mildly — backward.

The Indian contingent comprised 234 athletes and 51 coaches in 14 disciplines. As a country, the athletes won 47 gold, 54 silver and 72 bronze medals. Athletics and roller skating brought in a big chunk of the medals, with roller skaters winning 39 of them, including 10 gold.

Some of the gold medalists include 14-year-old Ranveer Singh Saini, who was diagnosed with autism when he was 2 and picked up golf as a therapeutic tool at the age of 9. The Indian Golf Union, the apex body of the sport, backed Saini’s passion for golf, providing him with a coach and training facilities.

“Ranveer has brought honor to the country. He has made India proud with his inspirational achievement. All the children are special to us. His performance shows that the parents must allow their kids to follow their dreams,” golfer Jeev Milkha Singh told PTI from London. “We as human beings can learn a lot from this achievement of Ranveer. We can learn that nothing is impossible and that hard work will give you positive results.

“One can learn that if the desire is there, nothing can stop you from realizing your dreams,” he added.

Two years ago, Saini became the first Indian golfer to win two gold medals at the Asia Pacific World Games.

Ten of the athletes in the Indian team came from the Delhi government-run Asha Kiran Home; between them, they won seven medals. Phoolan Devi, 17, who won one gold and three bronze medals in powerlifting, was abandoned on the streets of New Delhi when she was 16, and was moved to the home by the police. Then there is Rajvir Singh, the son of a casual laborer from Punjab, who won two gold medals in cycling events. And Kushal Resam from Goa, who won two golds and a bronze in roller skating.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi congratulated the Indian team, tweeting: “Achievements of Indian contingent at @LA2015 @SpecialOlympics are truly gladdening. They are India’s pride.

“The @LA2015 @SpecialOlympics were a triumph of determination, hard work & sportsman spirit. Congratulations to all athletes who participated.”

India had won 249 medals — 78 gold, 79 silver and 92 bronze — in the last edition of the games, held in Athens, Greece, in 2011.

The 2015 games opened and closed at the Los Angeles Coliseum, the venue of the 1932 and 1984 Olympics. Away from the competitions, thousands of athletes lined up at a medical center at the University of Southern California for the Games’ Healthy Athletes program. Before it ended, more than 500 people, including some who could not hear at all, had received hearing aids. More than 600 received new prescription glasses and more than 4,000 got new shoes.

The Special Olympics was the brainchild of former U.S. president John F. Kennedy’s sister Eunice Kennedy Shriver. That first year’s games in Chicago drew about 1,000 athletes from 26 American states and Canada.

Ami Bera, Joe Crowley Are 39 US Lawmakers Calling to Allow Turbaned Sikh Basketball Players

Ajay GhoshSports 0

Congressmen Ami Bera, Joe Crowley are among a group of 39 influential American lawmakers from both political parties has asked the International Basketball Federation to end its discrimination against Sikh players and allow them to play while wearing a turban.

Led by Congressmen Joe Crowley, vice chair of the Democratic Caucus, and Indian American Congressman Ami Bera, 39 members of the Congress, in a letter to the International Basketball Federation July 30, reiterated their support for a change in policy that requires Sikhs and other players to remove their articles of faith, such as turbans, in international competition.

The members also requested an update on FIBA’s review of the policy and on the status of the organization’s two-year testing phase announced last fall. Last summer, Crowley and Bera had led 22 Congress members in writing a letter to FIBA’s president, urging the board to end its discriminatory policy against Sikh basketball players who wear turbans, an important article of faith.

The letter followed an outcry over an incident involving two Sikh players who were told by referees that they must remove their turbans if they were to play in FIBA’s Asia Cup. The players, who have always played in turbans, were told that they were in violation of one of FIBA’s official rules, which states, “Players shall not wear equipment (objects) that may cause injury to other players.”

However, there is no evidence that a Sikh turban poses a threat to cause injury, and other sports leagues, such as Federation Internationale de Football Association and the National Collegiate Athletic Association, allow athletes wearing turbans to participate, the lawmakers argued.

In response to the members’ letter and strong public pressure, FIBA announced that it would review the issue and begin a two-year testing phase that would allow players to wear head coverings starting in summer 2015, with an ultimate eye toward a final decision after the 2016 Olympics.

However, despite FIBA’s promises about action this summer, there has been no update on the status of the testing phase, the congressmen said.

“We have seen time and again that sports have the power to unite — basketball included. The sport has gained in international stature in recent decades and is increasingly popular in countries where the use of a turban is a common practice. We urge you to amend your policies to ensure that people all around the world have an equal opportunity to play the game,” the lawmakers wrote in the letter.

“Sikhs participate in a wide variety of sports around the globe, and there has not been a single instance of someone being harmed or injured by a turban. Even at the amateur and professional levels, Sikhs have played sports without a problem,” the letter said.

“For example, Sikh American Dipanjot Singh played Division I basketball at the University of Illinois at Chicago in the National Collegiate Athletic Association. Singh then went on to play semi-professional basketball in several leagues,” it said.

5-Year-Old Karina Jadhav Wins Silver Medal in Jr. Golf Olympics

Ajay GhoshSports, Youth 0

Karina Jadhav, a 5-year-old kindergartner at Fairmont North Tustin school in Santa Ana, recently won a second place silver medal at the 2015 World Junior Golf Olympics held next to the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California. The young Indian American played competitive rounds of golf on a 1,100-yard course for four consecutive days. She made some putts and tricky bunker shots which displayed considerable talent for her young age.

Additionally, earlier this month, Jadhav qualified to play in the prestigious 2015 IMG Academy Junior World Championship and got to play with a group of the best junior golfers aged under 7 from around the world in San Diego. Notable past winners of the event include Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson.

Karina, the daughter of Amit and Smeeta Jadhav, is perhaps the youngest Indian American to qualify and participate in these two prestigious events.  She started playing golf at the age of 4-and-half, and was introduced to the game by her father, who is a reputed golf enthusiast. This young Orange County golfer practices every morning before school at the Irvine golf courses and is back again after school lets out.

Recently, Jadhav started taking lessons from the renowned Los Angeles coach Don Brown, who has coached pros like Kevin Na and Allison Lee. Aside from golf, her other interests include piano, swimming, gymnastics, dance and art. A self-disciplined kid, Jadhav likes to complete her homework on time and loves to play with Legos and soft toys.

2 Indian-Americans Help US Win Math Olympiad Championship

Ajay GhoshCommunity, Sports, Youth 0

Shyam Narayanan, 17, and Yang Liu, 18, two Indian-American youth, along with four other teenagers, took the U.S. mathematics team to the top at the 56th International Mathematical Olympiad, IMO, after a gap of 21 years. They competed against teams from 100 countries.

Glowing with pride at the victory ceremony July 14 after the gruelling competitions in Chiang Mai, Thailand which lasted from July 3 to 13, the young team is an epitome of what America means – a multicultural society whose immigrant populations have enabled it to gain recognition around the world. The six-member team had 3 Caucasians, one Chinese, one part Chinese and Indian, and 1 of Indian origin. “That diversity is a part of our culture,” Po Shen Loh, the national coach of the team, an associate professor at Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh, PA, told News India Times.

Shyam Narayanan and Yang Liu are special people, their coach said. While both Narayanan’s parents are of Indian origin, Liu’s father is Indian whose last name is Patil, and Liu sometimes uses that as his last name as well, and his mother is of Chinese origin. The parents’ names were not available by press time. Narayanan is a student at Blue Valley West High School in Kansas City, Missouri, and is enrolled in the Program for Research in Math, Engineering and Sciences, PRIMES-USA, at the Center for Advanced Professional Studies, CAPS, based in Augusta, Georgia.

Members of the U.S. team included Ryan Alweiss, Allen Liu, Yang Liu, Narayanan, and David Stoner, all of whom were awarded gold medals, and Michael Kural, who earned a silver medal, just one point away from the gold. The last time the U.S. team took first place was in 1994.

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