Savita Punia

Punia was born on 11 July 1990 in Jodhkan village of Sirsa district in Haryana. She was sent to the district headquarters for better schooling. She was enrolled in the sports academy. She was encouraged by her grandfather Mahinder Singh to take up hockey and joined the Sports Authority of India (SAI) centre at Hisar.[1] She was coached by Sunder Singh Kharab during her early years.[2] She was initially not too interested in the game, but later, when her father spent Twenty Thousand Rupees on her kit, she started to see the game in a new light and got serious about it. In 2007, Punia was picked for a maiden national camp in Lucknow, and she trained with a top goalkeeper.[3]

In 2008, Punia made her first international tour, a four nation event in Netherlands and Germany.[4] She made her senior international debut in the year 2011. She has featured in more than 100 games at the international level. She qualified for the national team in 2007 when she was barely 17. In 2009, she participated as a member if the team in the Junior Asia Cup. In 2013, she participated in the Eighth Women's Asia Cup held in Malaysia in she saved two crucial potential goals in the penalty shoot-out and paved the way for India to win a Bronze medal. She was a part of the bronze winning team at the 2014 Incheon Asian Games.

In the year 2016, she displayed excellent performance when she withstood a barrage of penalty corners against Japan in the last 1 minutes to help India hold on to its 1–0 lead. She helped the team qualify for the Rio Olympics after 36 years. In the Asia Cup of 2018, she made an astonishing save against China in the final, earning herself the goalkeeper of the tournament award and for her team, a slot in the 2018 World Cup in London.[5]

She performed effectively at the Hawke's Bay Cup in New Zealand and helped her team finish 6th in the tournament.[6]

Her outstanding performance helped the women's Indian team to beat Chile in the final match of the Women's Hockey World League Round 2.[7]

In an interview in 2016, Punia revealed that she had been promised a job under the Haryana Government's Medal Lao, Naukri Pao scheme, but hasn't got it. A year later too, she said that nothing had changed.

She was awarded the Baljit Singh Goalkeeper of the Year award at the Hockey India Annual Awards in 2015, for having phenomenal performances for India in international contributions which proved her worth as the best goalkeeper in the country. She also received a cash reward of 1 lakh rupees for her contribution to the sports.[8]

• Savita Punia profile at Hockey India
• Patwardhan, Deepti. "Savita Punia: India's lady in shining armour". Livemint. Retrieved 22 July 2018.