The Karnataka women’s team which had played well throughout the tournament lost the match by 29-22, 20-29, 3-29 against the team from Tamilnadu at St Joseph’s Engineering College, Chennai. The team which had won the trophy last year had to hand over the trophy to TN team this year.
The team Karnataka was positioned in the top rank in group ‘A’ after defeating Jharkhand, Uttaranchal, Haryana and Chandigarh teams. Despite having tough competition from Hyderabad team in the 8th stage and from Andhra team in the semi-finals, the women from Karnataka managed to defeat them all, only to hold the second position in the tourney.
The Mangalore University team under the guidance of Coach K Praveen Kumar had won All India Inter-university Ball Badminton award tourney last year. The Karnataka State team which too was trained by Praveen Kumar had won the trophy in the National Senior Ball Badminton Championship last year. “The significant players of the team Savita, Rekha and Spoorthy from Alva’s College were unable to take part in the tourney due to their exams. So the Karnataka team had to lose in the finals as it severely suffered the absence of experienced players,” informed Coach K Praveen Kumar.
Poornima steals the show
With an extraordinary performance, Alva’s Educational Institutions student G S Poornima has bagged the tourney’s ‘Star of India’ award for the consecutive third year.
In the men’s tournament, the team Karnataka ended up becoming the second runner up. Canara Bank employee Giri Prasad from Karnataka won ‘Star of India’ award under men’s category.
