Currently ranked no. 13 in the state, the table tennis player has been a regular at national and state-level championships for years.
Written by Poulomi Chatterjee
Unlike most students who give up their hobbies and sports activities while preparing for board exams, city boy Aryan Panse participated in more than 10 table tennis competitions last year. And despite that, Panse, a student of Bhugaon’s Sanskriti School, scored 91.4 per cent in the CBSE Class X exam, whose results were declared on Tuesday.
Currently ranked no. 13 in the state, the table tennis player has been a regular at national and state-level championships for years. Last year, when he participated in 10 state and district-level championships, Panse managed to bag a bronze at the state-level championships held at Balewadi in October. In the same month, he played again at a state-level championship in Thane and reached the quarter-finals of the event.
“Next year is important to me as I will be playing in the under-18 bracket. I want to get back to playing nationals as I really want to play table tennis professionally later in life. The sport has given me a lot, so I want to give back something,” said Panse, who hopes to pursue Commerce in Class XI. His reason for doing so is simple: “I think it will take less time to study and I can devote most of my time to sports”.