19-yr-old Bihar girl is rugby's International Young Player of the Year

Indian rugby player 19-year-old Sweety Kumari from Patna's Bahr Tehsil of Bihar has not only made her state proud, but also the entire country. Sweety has been awarded the International Young Player of the Year 2019 Award by reputed women’s rugby website Scrumqueens.

The Young Player category resulted in some of the most diverse nominations, over a dozen names being put forward from more than 10 different countries. All the nominees made a major impact on the game having started their careers at clubs or schools but only one began after forming her own team.

Sweety was an athlete with no knowledge about rugby. She had won a 100-meter race by clocking a timing of 11.58 seconds. She participated and won first at school, then at the district and then at the state level. The secretary of the state rugby association saw her at an athletics meeting and suggested that she try out rugby. At just 14, she single-mindedly found out all she could about the game, created and organised a team, and entered the state championship. The daughter of bank agent Dilip Kumar Choudhary and Anganwadi sevika Pushpa Kumari, Sweety didn't get proper training, not even a place to practise. Apart from Sweety, she has six other siblings. Within three years she was in the national U17 team, and in 2018 she was in the senior national team.

She impressed from the start but it was in 2019 she started making a big impact scene in Asia at both sevens and fifteens. Described by Asia Rugby as the continent's fastest player, her explosive pace and power has resulted in her top-scoring at most of India’s sevens tournaments, as well as scoring two outstanding tries their first ever test match win against Singapore.

India’s hopes of playing outside Asia appear limited with at least half a dozen better resourced and more experienced nations competing for Asia’s one or two spots in world tournaments so we may be a long time before we see Kumari pit her speed against the likes of Portia Woodman or Ellia Green, but if anyone player can take her team to a higher level its Kumari.

In the category of International Young Players, more than a dozen players from 10 countries were nominated. The special thing is that all the players except Sweetie have held many records in rugby before. The year-end poll, a mix of 10 shortlisted nominations from across the world followed by a public poll, picked the Indian, who was earlier declared by Asia Rugby as the “continent’s fastest player”. Sweety channelled her pace into rugby, where she is nicknamed India’s “Scoring Machine” by teammates.