Charity tournament brings out the champs in table tennis, chess and carom.
Vibha organized its third Annual indoor sporting event, the Vibha Khel Mela 2005 at the Global Mall on April 16th and 17th.
The tremendous energy and the competitive spirit which each participant played proved that this annual tradition is now a much cherished event for Atlanta Indians. This year's participation reflected upon the excellent talent that the community has in the three events - Table Tennis, Chess and Carom. It also confirmed the support of the community for the cause of Vibha, a non profit organization that works for the betterment of underprivileged children in India.
"Several matches in Table tennis, and Caroms were absolute nail-biters. It was quite fun to organize this event, while supporting a great cause", said Vinay Uchil and Sandhya Gomadam, the coordinators for the event. The proceeds from this event will benefit the child development projects in India in the areas of education, healthcare, and vocational training.
The event that received the most spirited response was chess in the category of kids aged 4 to 8 years. "This proves that there are a lot of promising champions of tomorrow", commented Mr. Steve Snyder, who organized the chess tournament. Mr. Snyder, a veteran of chess training for kids for more than 25 years has written several books on chess training and runs a chess school.
Sanjeev Dhambal was able to retain his championship for the second year in a row in the adult section, and Sumit Sohani was the winner in the juniors section.
The Table Tennis tournament introduced a lot of new talent. The championship match between Vijay Nagraj and Rajat Dua was a classic duel and undoubtedly the best match of the tournament. In the Women's section, last year's runners up Sandhya Gomadam, put up a tough fight against last year's champion Kumudini Phuley and came out the winner. She also won the Table Tennis Mixed Doubles category along with Vinay.
Eswar Konduru was the Champion of Caroms, India's most popular indoor sport as he retained the title for the third year in a row. He also bagged the Caroms Doubles Championship along with Suresh. The most interesting Caroms match was for the women's singles finals, between a mother and daughter, Poonam and Prabha Bhargava. Poonam, the daughter was the ultimate winner.
The sponsors of the event, Mr. Mukund Gomadam, President of Western Trading Inc. and Mr. Shiv Agarwal of Global Mall, gave away the prizes to all the winners. Other sponsors include Sanket Systems Inc., Delta Information Systems and Pyramid consulting Inc.
Vibha is run by volunteers coming from diverse backgrounds and we strongly encourage people in the community to volunteer. The next fund-raiser is the 7th annual Future Tech Vibha Cricket tournament to be held on May 7-8 and 14-15 at Georgia Tech.
The following are winners and runner up at Khel Mela 2005
Event Winner Runner ?up
Chess Sanjeev Dambal��� Satyanarayana Kokala
Pramod Sangawar
Chess Juniors Sumit Sohani Mathew Levinson
Carom Singles Eswar Konduru Atul Bhingarde
Carom Doubles Suresh Balsubramanian and Eswar Kondura Vinod Kumar and
Ganeshbabu Narayanaswami
Carom Junior Singles Gowtham Govind Madhumita Govind
Table Tennis Men's Singles Vijay Nagraj Rajat Dua
Table Tennis Women's Singles Sandhya Gomadam Kumudini Phuley
Table Tennis Men's Doubles Sanjeev Dhambal and Subhankar Mukherjee������ Shak Shaheed and
Raihan Hannan
Table Tennis Mixed Doubles Sandhya Gomadam and Vinay Uchil Selvi Kumar and
Shak Shaheed
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