Hockey player Shamsher has a city connect

Aakanksha N Bhardwaj

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, August 1

Harmanpreet, who will be leading India in the next month’s Olympic test event in Japan has a Jalandhar connect as he took training at the Surjit Hockey Academy here in his early years and so has Shamsher Singh (22), who will make a debut in the senior Indian hockey team and will play at the event.

Shamsher, who belongs to Attari, Amritsar, spent six years in Jalandhar and was trained at the Surjit Hockey Academy. He was in Class VII when he came to the city with an aim to polish his skills under the guidance of coaches of the academy. His father Hardev Singh is a farmer and mother Harpreet Kaur is a housewife.

Shamsher is pursuing graduation. He has no one in his family in the field of sports. Ask him if he had ever thought that he would reach here, Shamsher quickly replies: “Never, to be very honest. I just wanted to reach the academy in Jalandhar and then, was aiming for a job by playing nationals.”

But it was his love and dedication for hockey that helped him achieve this milestone.

“Before this, I was playing in the national junior hockey team. We will be going to Japan on August 12,” said Shamsher, who is at present at a Bengaluru camp. “I am thankful to my father. It is because of him that I have reached here,” he said.

For his father and mother, everything is like a dream. They said they thanked the almighty the moment they got to know about it.

Harpreet Kaur while sharing his childhood memories said not only in sports, but Shamsher was good in studies too.

“He always stood first in the class and would always score over 95 per cent,” Kaur said.

While sharing an anecdote, Kaur said when he was in Class III, he had joined a local academy to learn harmonium which he did not like much and left it after three months.

“He then joined the hockey academy in Class IV and started enjoying the same. It was then when I asked him to not to leave it now as I made him understood that if he would keep on leaving everything, he would not reach anywhere and that was the day when he decided never to leave hockey,” Harpreet Kaur said.

She also shared that such was Shamsher’s dedication towards the game that he would never missed the practice, even during his exams too.

“And there is an example that proves how disciplined he was. Whenever he would ask me to wake him up at 4 in the morning and I would not do so, or get a little late, he would start crying. Such was his perseverance towards his work and in life too,” the proud mother shared.

Was excellent in studies too, says mother

For his father and mother, everything is like a dream. They said they thanked the almighty the moment they got to know about it. Harpreet Kaur while sharing his childhood memories said not only in sports, but Shamsher was good in studies too.