Young Indian shooters on the mark in grade examinations
Anish Bhanwala and Shapath Bharadwaj juggled training and studies to score a whopping 90 per cent in their class XII examinations.
Teenage shooters Anish Bhanwala and Shapath Bharadwaj scored 90 per cent in their 12th-grade board examinations, the results of which were announced on Monday.
Anish Bhanwala, the youngest Indian to win a Commonwealth Games gold medal (in 2018), scored an impressive 89.8 per cent in the CBSE arts stream but only after finding time to study a month before the final papers.
“I was busy participating in tournaments and my exams were scheduled in March during the ISSF World Cup. So, I used to train at the ranges and go to school, where my teachers put in extra hours to help me out,” the 17-year-old Bhanwala told The Times of India.
And the young Indian shooter does not want to stop there and plans to enrol in a Bachelors of Business Administration (BBA) course soon.
“After BBA, I would like to pursue an MBA. It’s good to have professional degrees for a secure future,” Anish Bhanwala told the Press Trust of India.
The Indian shooter, who is ranked world No. 12 in the 25m Rapid Pistol, is part of the core group hoping to make his Olympics debut at Tokyo next year.
Shapath Bharadwaj, who in 2017 was the youngest Indian shooter to be included in a World Cup squad at 15, scored 90.25 per cent in the ICSE 12th-grade commerce course.
And unlike Anish Bhanwala, the 18-year-old Bharadwaj was well prepared when the examinations arrived.
“After clearing my standard 11 exams, I tried to finish the accounts course in the one-month summer break,” the Meerut-based trap shooter told The Times of India.
“When the season began, I carried my books everywhere I went and studied between tournaments and also whenever I took a break during training.”
Shapath Bharadwaj, who took up shooting in 2013, had won the junior state double trap championship within a year of starting. He made the senior Indian shooting team at the age of 14.