Joanna Prisca (7) from Tirupur has skated to glory, winning the gold medal in the under-8 category of 300 m(inline) event at the National Inter-School Roller Skating Championship conducted by Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) in Punjab.
She qualified for the national event by winning the South Zone qualifier event conducted by CBSE at Tirupati in December 2016.
Ms. Prisca, a student of Mount Litera Zee School here, was also a gold medallist in the artistic and free style event (under-6 category) at the Tamil Nadu State Roller Skating Championship conducted by Tamil Nadu Roller Skating Association a year ago.
“I practice for five hours every day in a rink available here,” she told The Hindu .
Though she sounded ecstatic about winning one gold medal in the national event at Punjab, Prisca did not hesitate to tell her disappointment of missing the second gold in the 1,000 mcategory in the championship.
“I could only finish fourth after a minor fall since heavy mist was there during the event,” she said. Her parents- Emmanuel Praveen Kumar, a social worker, and Shirley Catharine, who works as academic director in a school, wanted to support her skating ambitions further though the cost of good quality sportswear and trips to different championships in general was high.
