As Goa hosts the National Games, Goans would be proud to know that a fellow Goenkar from Navi Mumbai, Fr Saturnino Almeida, sfx, is producing medal winners at the Goa games itself.
And to boot, the Catholic religious order he represents is Goan too; Fr Agnel’s. Rishabh Das, a Std X student of Fr Agnel’s School, Vashi, Navi Mumbai, won four swimming medals at Goa last week, three of them silvers in individual events.
At 16, he is the youngest male medallist in the Goa games. International table tennis player Deepit Patil, an ex-student, also won a bronze in the team event.
Fr Almeida though is no coach. He is a priest and teacher whose heart -- like a true Goan -- is in sports. His institution believes that studies and sports must go hand-in-hand as all-round ability is needed to do well in life.
“What can be taught on the sports field cannot be taught in the classroom,” says Fr Almeida, who grew up in Velha Goa. By tapping both mind and body, Fr Agnel’s Multipurpose School and Jr College has produced hundreds of toppers and sportspersons over the past three decades.
Meanwhile, Fr Almeida has moved up to being the Managing Director of the Fr Agnel Technical Education Complex, Vashi. The best place to meet him though remains the sports ground. Lest one think Rishabh’s a fluke, their swimming coach Gokul Kamath says that Agnel swimmers made their mark way back in 2006, winning eight gold medals at the South Asian Games at Colombo. Lekha Kamath won six and Surabhi Tipre won two. Ex-students Lekha Kamath, Jyotsna Pansare and Viraj Prabhu won several international medals in swimming and received the state government’s Shiv Chhatrapati award.
On July 17, this year, another Agnelite, Anshuman Jhingran (18), became the youngest to cross the North Channel from Northern Ireland to Scotland earning him a mention in the Guinness World Records. Although, swimming has fetched them the most medals, Fr Agnel’s School has been nurturing talent in various sports.
Priyanka Sujeesh has been a member of the Indian Women’s football team, Trisha Mukherjee represented India at the Asian Junior Championship in shooting, Rosalin Lewis is a silver medallist in athletics at the World School Games.
Diezny D’Souza was the 100-metre sprint champ for Fr Agnel’s winning junior nationals right up to U-17. She went on to win the U-22 gold and bagged a bronze in the nationals in 1993.
“Fr Agnel’s gives you training as well as exposure,” says Diezny, a LIC officer who has won medals at the Masters Games in Malaysia and China.
Veteran sports journalists Gordon D’Costa, Stanislaus D’Souza and Ignatius Albuquerque say that Fr Agnel’s was always a force to reckon with in school sports. Another veteran who started as a sports journalist, Sunil Warrier, says it’s creditable for a school to continue a sports programme for so long. D’Costa says that South Mumbai schools too play their zonal qualifiers at Fr Agnel’s as it conducts the District Sports Office matches. Recently, the Sports Authority of India has accredited Fr Agnel’s as a Khelo India Academy for six disciplines.
“We encourage every student to take up a sport and provide professional coaching,” says Headmistress Kavita Ganguly.
In fact, the school has a unique formula. Those who excel in sports are given time to train in the mornings too during the competition season and they are helped to cope with the academics with extra help from the subject teachers. Many athletes who had exams during national meets or camps have even written their exams from the camps and gone on to do very well in their board exams. Regular assessment of academic performance is carried out to ensure that athletes don’t fall behind in academics.
In fact, the school has a full-fledged Sports Centre with a semi-Olympic size pool, a world class shooting range, two basketball courts, an indoor badminton court, a table tennis hall with international standard flooring, a gymnastics hall, a chess room and a roller-skating rink. It also has two astro turf grounds for hockey/football and for athletics. The Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation doesn’t have a swimming pool, let alone astro turf. No wonder that students from other schools come to seek training at the Agnel Sports Centre. One of them, Ibrahim Ali (10), comes daily all the way from Kharghar, 15km away, for a two-hour session under Kamath. Besides, as part of their social outreach programme, Fr Agnel’s has tied up with civic schools and 40 chosen students are trained for a month. While other schools boast about their toppers, the display boards at Fr Agnel’s feature winners in sports tournaments. The school is a factory for merit listers too. Last year, the Fr C Rodrigues Institute of Technology, Vashi, which is run by the Agnel Region of the Society of Pilar, Goa, was conferred with ‘The Best College Award 2020-21’ in the urban area category, by the University of Mumbai.
Many ex-Agnelites are now at the helm of coaching at the complex. The shooting range is headed by Olympian Suma Shirur, who is also serving the Indian shooting team and has recently been conferred the Dronacharya Award. She used to play badminton and table tennis for Fr Agnel’s and remembers that Fr Almeida took them out for lunch even when they lost. The swimming pool is headed by another alumnus Gokul Kamath, who has an enviable record of producing over one thousand national medals till date and has taken Agnel’s to 22 international medals in swimming.
Chaitanya Udare, another former Agnelite and Suhas Chavan serve as head coaches for table tennis and have produced national and international table tennis players for the school. Sports stars such as Dhanraj Pillai, Sunil Chhetri, Pullela Gopichand etc visit the Fr Agnel Sports Centre to motivate players.