3 things to know if you want to pursue a Career in Sports !

From injured physios and bitten defenders in the Football World Cup, to India winning 10 matches in a row in the Cricket World Cup, sports talk has been the pulse of conversations in social circles for the past year. In the wake of the nail biting and exciting year in the world of sports, I found myself in an interesting discussion with my friends about sports in the global context and the scope of being a sports person in India today. One of my friends in this discussion was Ryesh Venkatraman, a professional footballer and avid sportsman. He spoke of how athletics has been brought into the limelight in the past 5 years and how kids today have ample opportunities to pursue sports.

Thinking more on that conversation after I got home that day, I thought it would be a good idea to talk to Ryesh about his journey as a sport person and know more of his thoughts on the subject. Promptly, we met over coffee the next day and had a fun heart to heart on growing up, careers and sports! 

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 “When I was younger, my family and I lived in Bombay before eventually moving to Pune. As a kid, I spent my days at the Bombay Gymkhana, a club renowned for its social and sporting life. And I guess that’s what got me to fall in love with sports ! My family and I are sports fanatics and we love the outdoors. My younger sister Tishya and I grew up playing a variety of sports and our parents always encouraged us to have a life outside of the typical school-exam-classes routine”, he told me, talking about his initial interest in the outdoors.

How to start your own outdoors venture, and just about anything!

This is the story of a young software engineer-turned-outdoors entrepreneur named Ishan Sharma. This is the story of a small bunch of people who are determined to take people beyond their potential.

But this is also the story of every person who ever looked around their tube-lit classroom or hi-tech workplace, spied upon rows and rows of people staring into their computer screens, and then looked at the murky city sky outside and wondered...I wish I was out there!! 

It is the story of every executive who ever looked out of an airplane window at the rolling hills and green fields below, wistfully wished she could be down there, then picked up her bag and dutifully stood in line to deplane and go for that boring meeting.

It is the story of every person who ever stepped out of his multi-storeyed building into a traffic clogged street, covering his nose against noxious fumes, jumped into the nearest auto-rickshaw and asked to be driven to the market 2 kms away, grumbling about the 50 bucks he has to shell out for this short journey.

And if you have ever heard that voice in your head telling you to just do it, get out there, push your limits, then this is also your story. So read on...