National TT player gets 98% in ICSE, strikes balance

Guwahati: Prakriti Pankaj Singh, a member of the Assam state table tennis team for several years, chose not to give up sports for academics and scored a 98.2% in the ICSE examination.A student of the city’s Sanskriti The Gurukul School, Prakriti has shown that sports and studies can go together. When the ICSE results were declared on Thursday, she emerged as one of the school’s top performers. The school strongly supported her by arranging special classes to help her cover missed lessons, while her family stood by her throughout.“For me, it was not difficult to balance sports and academics. Determination is everything. If someone is determined enough to achieve something, it can be done,” she said.Prakriti said her school was day boarding, and she did not feel tired after classes and could still devote time to sports. Her father, Pankaj Singh, a lawyer, said the family supported their only child throughout, and the academy also adjusted its timings for her. “We always tried to ensure that she never missed school, if she is in the city,” Pankaj said.“Whenever I used to go for tournaments and missed classes for two to three days, my teachers took extra care to clear the backlog. They also arranged extra classes for me,” Prakriti said, adding that balancing academics and sports has been her mantra since