Hail these sports coaches for their illustrious proteges

Sports, they say, can sometimes teach you more about life than formal education can. This is why on Teachers’ Day, we list the names of some sports coaches who have mentored the most promising talent in annals of Indian sporting history. What do these teachers have in common other than their famous pupils, you ask? For starters, they’re all recipients of the prestigious Dronacharya Award, the highest sporting honour for coaches presented by the Indian government. And then, all of them have rural roots in some part of the country. Read on and discover more about their achievements.

Mahavir Singh Phogat (Wrestling)

A former amateur wrestler turned coach, Mahavir Singh Phogat was honoured with the Dronacharya Award in 2016. Hailing from Balali, a village in the Charkhi Dadri district of Haryana, Mahavir played a pivotal role in shaping the wrestling careers of his daughters Geeta, Babita and Ritu Phogat, establishing a name for women wrestlers. 

Mahavir Singh Phogat also coached Vinesh Phogat, an Asian Games and Commonwealth Games gold medallist, and Priyanka Phogat. Geeta Phogat won India’s first gold medal in women’s wrestling in the 55 kg freestyle category at the 2010 Commonwealth Games and was the first Indian woman wrestler to qualify for the Olympics. His students have brought laurels to the country, and his legacy was immortalised on screen in Aamir Khan’s film Dangal.

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Hansa Manral Sharma (Weightlifting)

Hansa Manral Sharma was the first woman to be awarded the Dronacharya Award in 2000 as a weightlifting coach. Born in Bhatkot in Pithoragarh, she won many laurels in athletics for the state of Uttarakhand but later switched to weightlifting on the advice of national coach Govind Prasad Sharma.

Roma Devi, Karnam Malleswari, Jyotsna Datta and Anita Chanu are some of the athletes who trained under Hansa Manral. Under her guidance, Indian women weightlifters won five silver and two bronze medals for the first time at the World Weightlifting Championships.

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Sunil Dabas (Kabaddi)

Hailing from the village of Mohammadpur Majra in Jhajjar district of Haryana, Sunil Dabas took up the indigenous sport of kabaddi in her early years and coached the national women’s kabaddi team for several years after her appointment in 2005. 

Under her guidance, the team achieved remarkable success, winning seven gold medals in prestigious international championships. These include the 2006 South Asian Games, the 2nd and 3rd Asian Championships in 2007, the 2009 South Asian Games, the 2010 Asian Games, the 2012 Women’s Kabaddi World Cup, and the 4th Indoor Asian Games in 2013. For her outstanding contributions, Sunil was honoured with the Dronacharya Award in 2012 and the Padma Shri in 2014.

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Jagdish Singh (Boxing)

A former national boxer and coach from the Bhiwani district in Haryana, Jagdish Singh is a significant force behind Bhiwani’s emergence as a nursery of boxers. His relentless work since 1996 has been recognised, and he was awarded the Dronacharya Award in 2007. His students include Vijender Singh, a bronze medallist at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, as well as several Arjuna awardees. Twelve of his students have won medals in world championships, including five gold, one  silver and six bronze medals across various age groups. In 2022, the Bhiwani police booked Singh under the Juvenile Justice Act for allegedly threatening a 13-year-old budding wrestler over the issue of raising the age bar issue of his opponent during a tournament at Bhiwani’s Sai Stadium on April 12. SIngh called all the allegations false and baseless.

Also Read: “You’re a girl. How can you go out in a sports outfit?”

The lead image on top depicts a collage of Jagdish Singh, Mahavir Singh Phogat, and Sunil Dabas.