by CHIN CABRIDO
Nim Doma scores against Jaipur. PHOTO/Chin Cabrido
The young players hands are engraved with the names of celebrated Women’s National Basketball players. Though each display a different champion, they have all accomplished the same seamless record of points, assists, and defensive rebounds that proclaimed their team the first school from the entire northeast Indian region to win the Central Board for Secondary Education (CBSE) under-19 Basketball Championship.
In a tiny hamlet called Gangyap (meaning ‘behind the hills’ in local Bhutia dialect in Sikkim, India), a 16-woman basketball team is clinching women’s basketball trophies and grabbing the local news headlines. The team captain, Nima Doma Bhutia, alongside fifteen women players are first generation learners attending Eklavya Model Residential School (EMRS) for tribal children that is funded by the Ministry of Tribal Affairs, Government of India. I first heard of the girls of Gangyap through local news in Sikkim India and began contacting friends in Sikkim to reach the girls’ coach. Since electricity is intermittent and phone signal unstable in Gangyap, it was very hard to reach the players coach by email or by phone but after three weeks I was able to contact Sidharth Yonzone.
The school, headed by the players’ coach Principal Sidharth Yonzone, is the first of its kind to provide quality education for poor tribal children from Sikkim’s remote reaches. The girls all come from the west district of Sikkim, mainly from small villages, wherein they join the school through an entrance examination at class 6.
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