Have a glance at the best female hockey players in India
Have a glance at the best female hockey players in India. India’s women’s hockey team is so remarkable because some of these women overcame all challenges to get to where they are now. Here are five ice hockey players who you should look up to on a daily basis.
Lalremsiami: The 19-year-old Mizoram striker took the field against Chile in the semifinal the day after her father, Lalthansanga Zote, passed away after a heart attack on Friday morning. The team’s head coach, Sjoerd Marijne, had proposed that she fly home to attend her father’s funeral, but Lalremsiami had other plans. On the other hand, Lalremsiami barely knew how to speak Hindi or English when she first joined the team. She initially communicated with her teammates using hand gestures until picking up both languages with the help of her teammates and self-help books.
Deep Grace Ekka: Meet 25-year-old Orissa defenders from a small settlement in the Sundargarh region. A government coach runs the Sundargarh Sports Hostel in Odisha, one of the state’s top three hockey training centers, and discovered her talent when she was thirteen. She hasn’t looked back since then.
Rani Rampal: Indian captains have come a long way from training with broken hockey sticks to becoming the youngest player on the women’s national ice hockey team. Rani Rampal’s mother worked as a domestic helper, and her father worked as a cart-puller, earning about 80 rupees a day. Inspired by the athletes she saw at the hockey academy next to her, she decided to join them. But her father couldn’t afford a hockey stick, so she had to practice with a broken hockey stick.
Gurjit Kaur: The drug flickr Gurugit Cowl was born to a farmer in Amritsar’s Miami Karan. She and her sister spent most of their lives in their village, where they didn’t know what hockey was, let alone how to play it. Grugit surprised her confident Australian by winning her world fourth place in India’s Olympic quarterfinals and changing her only penalty corner in India in the 22nd minute.
Vandana Katariya: When Bandana Catalya was young, her passion for hockey was constantly warned that she was “not suitable for women.” In the village of Roshnabad, Uttarakhand, she practiced her technique with her branches in a secret place away from the judgmental gaze of the elders. Vandana’s father died three months before the Tokyo Olympics and was unable to go home for her training. Despite her many challenges, on July 31, 2021, she became the first Indian woman to record a hat-trick at the Olympics.