Deeksha Sivakumar from TIPS Chennai Perungudi, began swimming when she was in grade 5 and mastered the sport within 6-7 months. Attending ESP classes was an added bonus for her as she could focus more on the sport. Deeksha actively participated in all the swimming competitions held at school and even won her first gold medal. ESP classes at school helped her gain a lot of technique and bagged 3 gold, 1 silver, and 1 bronze medal.
In 7th grade, Deeksha took part in the inter-school competition and won 2 bronze medals.. During this competition, she got an offer to attend training at the ORCA Swimming School. Her swim time drastically improved once she started her training with ORCA and the same year she bagged 6 gold medals and won all the school competitions.
In the following years, Deeksha attended 4 state meets and many inter-school competitions representing TIPS.
She also won (4 bronze, 1 bronze in my individual event 100 backstrokes, and there other 3 were from a relay )at the junior national selection. In December of 2021, Deeksha participated in the south zone selections and won (1 gold in the 100 freestyle, silver in the 50 freestyle, and 2 silvers in the 100 ond 200 backstroke events )
In 2022, she attended the 48th junior state aquatic championship and bagged (3 gold medals, 2 silver, and 3 bronze) and also got selected to represent Tamil Nadu at the nationals for the first time which took place in Bhuvneshwar on the 16th July of 2022.
Soon after the nationals, Deeksha attended senior state which had participants of all ages, including participants older than her and won 1 silver and 2 bronze medals and received another opportunity to participate in another national meet. She also attended the Khelo Indio women’s series at Bengaluru and got placed 6th in the 100 freestyle, 9th in the 200 freestyle, and 11th in the 100 backstrokes. I got selected to the next round as I qualified in the top 10 places.
Deeksha’s dream is to win India’s first ever Olympic gold medal and she has set goals for herself to achieve by the end of next year to take part in the Olympics of 2024 happening in Paris.
