National boxing meet in Tamil Nadu from Jan.28 Staff Reporter 5 women boxers from Orissa to represent East Zone Selected boxers leave for Chennai for the national meet National boxing referee confident of good show by State boxers BERHAMPUR: Five women boxers of Orissa were included in the East Zone team. These boxers would take part in the first women’s inter-zonal national boxing championship to be held in Thirupur in Tamil Nadu from Thursday. This special amateur boxing championship is being organised by the Tamil Nadu Amateur Boxing Association under the monitoring of the Indian Amateur Boxing Federation (IABF). The selected boxers boarded the train for Chennai from Berhampur on Monday. The boxers were Mamata Kumari Panda, Sasmita Das, Sasmita Raut, Santisikha Biswal and A.Khanam. They were accompanied by Coach Bijay Das and joint secretary of the IABF, Anil Bahidar. Mr. Bahidar would act as a jury member in the boxing tournament. Training The five boxers taking part in the tournament from Orissa were selected from the State-level boxing tournament held at Sundargarh in October last year. Three of them had been provided extensive training in Berhampur by local coach and national boxing referee, Sisir Kumar Panigrahy. Mr. Panigrahy said he was confident that the girls from Orissa would win medals in the national tournament. It may be noted that Orissa has till date produced several women boxers of national repute. A large chunk of them are from Berhampur, which is also called the cradle of women’s boxing in the State. Veteran boxers of the city, coaches and sport enthusiasts gathered up to provide best wishes to the Oriya boxers on their way to the national tournament.
Posted on: Sun, 20 Oct 2013 09:16:41 +0000