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Emblems of Empowerment| The obstacles could never stop her from reaching her goals
Part 12: Soliha Yousuf, 26, the first and only woman to captain and coach the Jammu and Kashmir women’s rugby team for over a decade, didn’t let the obstacles pin her down
Life threw many obstacles in her path, but none strong enough to pin her down. Soliha Yousuf, 26, the first and only woman to captain and coach the Jammu and Kashmir women’s rugby team for over a decade, never had it easy. From losing her father at the age of 10 to trailblazing into a sport less known, Yousuf remained steadfast as she faced new challenges in life.
“I was about 14 or 15 years old when J&K rugby officials came hunting for talent in schools in 2008. I had never seen a rugby ball before that. I was fascinated with it from the very start,” says the 26-year-old who has also dabbled with athletics, kho kho and cricket in her early years.
Within the next three years, she reached her first international rugby camp. In 2010, she was selected to participate in the Asian Championship in Pune.
“I was the only girl from Kashmir among 30 girls selected for the camp across the country,” she says. Immediately after the camp, she was selected for Level-1 coaching, which she cleared and started coaching the girls in Kashmir. “There were two of us from Kashmir. But I am the one who is still continuing. Till then, no one had been selected for international matches or Level- 1 coaching,” she says.
When the going gets tough, the tough get going
She says the period between 2008 and 2010 was the most challenging. “We used to play on a shared patch at Polo Ground where we had to fight with male footballers and cricketers for space. Many girls were shy to come while the parents of some would not allow them to play,” she says. Yousuf, however, adds things have started to change.
One of the most challenging coaching tasks for her came in 2012 when she was asked to train the senior boys’ rugby team for a North Zone match. She had hardly turned 19 at the time and most boys in the team were twice her age. “Initially, they didn’t take me seriously but then I got strict and punished them by making them do rounds of the ground. Eventually they saw that I was not going to budge and they yielded,” she says, adding that the team went on to win the North Zone match.
By 2015, J&K Women’s Rugby Team qualified for national games, in which only seven teams of the country can participate. In 2017, the team won gold in Snow Nationals at Gulmarg. “It became memorable for us because for the first time, matches were taking place in Kashmir at such a high-level and in front of our home crowd. Many misconceptions vanished and the local audience boosted us,” she says.
The many other hats she dons
Encouraged by her mother, Yousuf pursued M.Tech in computer sciences in 2018. Most of her income comes from academic research projects, giving coding lessons and her job as a gym instructor. “There is barely any money from sports though I have been playing and coaching for over a decade now,” she says. She wants the sports council to take the livelihood of coaches seriously.
