St Mary's Student Neelima Makes Udupi Proud - Bags National Gold in Badminton

Report and pics by Kevin Rodrigues
Daijiworld Media Network – Udupi (RD/SP)
 
Udupi, Feb 18: Neelima, Class X student of St Mary's English School here, was felicitated on Monday February 16 morning, at a function organized at the school grounds, for bagging gold in national-level shuttle badminton tournament held recently at Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh (AP).
 
St Mary's English School correspondent Fr Mathew Vas felicitated Neelima.
 
School head teacher Myrtle L F Lewis, district physical education officer Vithal Shetty, Neelima's parents P Shashidar, an employee of State Bank of Mysore, city branch and T Sonik, Hanumanthnagar Government High School teacher, physical training instructors Gerald Pinto and Bhaskar were present at the dais.

Neelima's sports career began in Class V during 2003 – 04.  She had represented the district at the state-level table tennis and shuttle badminton events.
 
She is also the winner in the state-level Dasara open shuttle badminton competition, which was held at Mysore and represented Karnataka state at the national-level which was held at Himachal Pradesh in 2008-09.  She is the runner-up in the under-16 category state-level shuttle badminton, which was held at Manipal, organized by Udupi district Shuttle Badminton Association.  In addition, she also happens to be the doubles under-16 champion.
 
She has represented Karnataka state team under-17 girls’ category in the shuttle badminton tournament at the national-level, which was held at Visakhapatnam, AP, by School Games Federation of India and bagged the gold medal.
 
She is an all rounder, A + in studies, good in dance and participates in quiz, elocution etc besides being the school pupil leader for the academic year 2008-09.