With a little luck…the story may well have been different!

-          Bernard Fernandes

This is the story of our ‘also-rans’ yet noteworthy performers in sports.  They may not have climbed the podium, but were almost there. Competition can be fierce, yet cruel; sport can take you to the summit of joy and elation, yet disappoint you with a nerve wrecking loss. In chess, half a point can separate a second or third place with the sixteenth. An unforced error in a long badminton rally can cost you the point, the game and the match. Our young guns are smarting after such close losses – contests that could have gone either way - in the ongoing inter-school DSO and MSSA tournaments. 

Jaidev Menon from Std. VIII, a rising badminton star suffered the painful exit at the pre-quarter final stage in the under-14 Badminton MSSA tournament, when he lost to another challenger for the title from Campion School by a solitary point.  The loss has not deterred him; rather his intrepid nature has egged him on to set his eyes on the national championship in the coming days.

Another close loss – this time by half a point – in chess, cost our chess master, Atharva Chaturvedi, a 3^rd-4^th play-off match in the DSO under-14 chess tournament.  On the international scene, however, Atharva has improved his ELO rating points.  In the standard category, he has now a chess rating of 1455 ELO points, while in the rapid section, 1400 ELO points. Close on his heels are our other chess wizards who performed exceptionally well at the DSO tournament in the under-17 category (here they had to compete with the Junior College students too, keeping in mind the age group).  Palash Chathurvedi (Std. X), Dheer Dhutia (Std. IX), Jainam Gangar (Std. X) and Rajiv Aiyer (Std. IX) all did well to earn respectable positions – placed 26^th to 32^nd – in a very strong field of contestants.

Our younger students have a great fascination for sport – guess this is the only time that they can pursue sport at leisure!  A few of them have enrolled in Martial arts at the various training academies. They return with a bag full of medals and certificates for their outstanding performance after every competition – local and state.  The latest sensation is Rishi Raturi of Std. V, who just returned with an Orange Belt 7^th KYU in a competition organized by the Indian Martial Arts Training Centre.

There’s a Chinese aphorism: to gain, you must yield, to grasp let go, to win lose… Of late, the Chinese have perfected the art of winning!  Boys, are you listening?