Girls Sports Company: Inside Indian Army’s mission to turn teenage girls into champion athletes | Sport-others News

There’s an out-of-rhythm thump-thump-thump beat that punctuates the quiet afternoon air at the sprawling Army Sports Institute in Pune’s Koregaon Park. The clank of heavy metal falling on the ground comes from the spacious gym, where about 40-odd weightlifters and their coaches are scattered around the multiple lifting platforms.The Army’s beefiest best are here, clean-and-jerking and snatching barbells loaded with hundreds of kilograms at times, with a grunt here and a command there.
In one corner of this cavernous gym, in what feels like another world, are four girls quietly lifting away their own set of weights. The quartet is part of a path-breaking new programme the Army piloted seven months ago — the Girls Sports Company (GSC).
“I want to become a champion,” declares 13-year-old Naorem Victoria Devi, who is living her grandfather’s dream following in the footsteps of world-renowned lifters from Manipur. “It was my grandfather’s wish that I became a weightlifter like Mirabai Chanu, Kunjarani Devi, Sanamacha Chanu, Soniya (Chanu). I am here to fulfill that ambition.”
The girls being coached at the Army Sports Institute in Pune’s Koregaon Park (Express Photo Arul Horizon)
Like Victoria, 34 other girls, all in their early teens, nurture the same dream. And giving these dreams wings is the Army.
For more than two decades, the Army has been spotting, honing and producing world-champion male athletes through its Boys Sports Company. Seven months ago, it opened the doors of its institutes in Pune in Maharashtra and Mhow in Madhya Pradesh to girls.
Thousands auditioned for the precious few spots at the GSC, which was established in May 2024, but only a few dozen got selected. Since then, the girls have been living and training at Pune’s Army Sports Institute and the Army Marksmanship Unit in Mhow.
While other public and private institutes have been training and producing women athletes for years, the Army couldn’t, because there were no employment opportunities for women until 2019.
“The boys’ programme was based on that — the time you reach the recruitment age, we’ll make you capable of joining the Army,” says Major Swati Rana, the Officer Commanding (OC) for the GSC programme at Pune institute. “So when we ask why now, it is because there is a recruitment process for them. They can get employment out of it, which wasn’t possible earlier. It was high time to support women athletes.”
The massive institute in Pune’s Koregaon Park is a world unto its own, with hundreds of athletes — from dreamy-eyed teenagers to the battle-hardened Olympians — making it their home ((Express Photo Arul Horizon)
Until 2019, the Army did not recruit women below the rank of an officer. The induction of women as soldiers after 2019 laid the foundation of the GSC, modelled on the Boys Sports Company.
One of the most successful programmes in delivering top-level athletes since the turn of the century, teenage boys are recruited in the Boys Sports Company and groomed to be a sportsperson. They are also trained in a way that the time they reach the recruitment age of 17 and a half, they can be inducted into the Army. Weightlifter Jeremy Lalrinnunga, a Youth Olympics and Commonwealth Games medall, is one of the products of the Boys Sports Company.
The recruitment carrot
In Major Rana’s cabin at the Pune institute hangs a board with words in Hindi. Loosely translated, it reads, “These three replies will not be given here: Mujhe charge main aisa mila tha (This is how it was when I took charge). Mujhe nahi pata (I don’t know). Pehle se aisa hi chal raha hai. (This is the way it has always happened).”
That last line, in particular, could well be the motto for the GSC.
Recruitment is a carrot. The possibility of being enrolled as direct entry non-commissioned officers and direct entry junior commissioned officers, apart from the Agniveer scheme, is one of the main reasons why parents are willing to send their children to these faraway campuses.
There is also a sporting logic to it, explain Major Rana and Colonel Naren Babu Chalasani, the Commanding Officer (CO) of the Army Marksmanship Unit in Mhow.
“The larger logic is that if you look at the Chinese Olympic medals, almost 65 per cent come from women. That is why we felt it was important to train girls…. I feel that India will benefit when the women athletes are very strong,” Colonel Chalasani says. “You see in the past Olympic cycles, like Rio 2016 and Tokyo 2020, where women athletes have done well for India.”
In Pune, 1,100-odd girls came from different corners of the country to audition for the 120 spots across four sports where India has traditionally done well — archery, athletics, boxing and weightlifting. They were put through rigorous tests, from physical to motor skills and psychological, before the best were picked.
“Just 24 made the cut based on our criteria. So we enrolled them (at the Pune institute),” Major Rana says, adding that girls from states such as Assam and Manipur in the Northeast to Goa and Rajasthan and sporting heavyweights such as Maharashtra and Haryana are now a part of the programme.
The true test of talent was in Mhow, where approximately 1,200 girls turned up for shooting alone. A rigorous screening process followed, Colonel Chalasani says, adding that 50 per cent of the marks were based on their past performances, 25 per cent on a skills test, 20 per cent on how well they did during the physical tests and the remaining five per cent on a psychological test.
Two archers in action at the Army Sports Institute in Pune’s Koregaon Park (Express photo Arul Horizon)
“Of 1,200 applicants (at the Mhow institute), 72 girls turned up and 18 of them were short-led. Eventually, we handpicked 11 shooters in the first batch after they cleared medical tests. The next intake will be around March this year,” Colonel Chalasani says.
Gender sensitisation
It hasn’t been as straightforward as simply starting a new company and setting them on the path to the podium.
The massive institute in Pune’s Koregaon Park is a world unto its own, with hundreds of athletes — from dreamy-eyed teenagers to the battle-hardened Olympians — making it their home. Before girls from different parts of the country moved to what was once a male-only space, a sensitisation session was held for everyone who trained, worked and stayed on campus.
Before the programme began, a psycholog from Mumbai visited the institute to conduct a gender sensitisation session. The purpose, Major Rana says, was to get a conversation around “how coaches are supposed to react and interact” around women athletes since they had until then mostly trained men, and to educate the male athletes and staff. The process is underway to induct women coaches. In the early weeks after the girls moved into the campus in Pune, officers’ wives would come in to make them feel at ease.
The priority was to ensure a safe environment, Major Rana says, adding, “These girls were earlier in the safety and security of their family. Now, they are suddenly thrown into this big world, where they are just a part of this entire scheme.”
The army’s original Boys Sports Company was terminated in 1976. It was resurrected in 1991 in collaboration with the Sports Authority of India (SAI). (Express Photo Arul Horizon)
Recently, experts were roped in to educate the girls about menstrual cycles and pelvic health. “The expert shared her insight about tracking their cycles, over how their body was going to change over the next four to five years and how they were supposed to be confident about it, rather than being vulnerable in those moments,” Major Rana says.
Adding colour to the institute
Housed inside the Pune campus, a short walk away from their training ground and the on-site school, the two dozen girls have added “colour to the institute”. And the male athletes, the coaches and officers say, feel “very responsible” towards them, especially when they travel for tournaments.
They might still not be fluent in Hindi or English, but songs Sia and Lana Del Rey blare out of the speakers in their rooms, adds Major Rana, so that “they can pick up some words”.
One evening, there was a screening of King Richard, a movie that traces the journey of the Williams sers to the top of the tennis world. “It is fascinating. The reaction of the girls was so different from (the boys)… when Venus (Williams) enters for that first match, you should have seen their faces. They just relate to everything — that this could be us,” Major Rana says.
She keeps a dossier on all the players under her care, tracking down personality changes of these 24 girls and their athletic improvements, among other things. Somewhere in those notings, falls out the following anecdote.
Maharashtra’s Arya K, an aspiring middle-dance runner, was asked at one point what the five Olympic rings meant to her.
Boxers waiting for the selection trials at the the Army Sports Institute in Pune’s Koregaon Park (Express photo Arul Horizon)
Arya, the 15-year-old daughter of a small-time farmer in Satara, recalls her answer: “The first ring stands for my parents’ struggles to send me here. The second is for all the taunts they had to hear from society for giving birth to a girl child; they had to endure a lot of torture. The third ring is for my coach who left no stone unturned to help me reach so far. The fourth represents the support I got from home; there were times when we didn’t even have money to travel to the neighbouring village for competition but they borrowed money so that my dreams didn’t suffer. And the fifth ring is a reminder to myself that I have endured so much already, so there is no reason for me to give up. What else do I need?”
While the girls in Pune are still taking ba steps in their respective sports, at Mhow, the shooters are wasting no time in getting down to business.
At the ongoing National Shooting Championships in Madhya Pradesh, two girls from the handpicked group of 11 training at Mhow were among the medalls. Sejal Kamble, 15, combined with Armyman Ravinder Singh to win the mixed team air pol gold. It was an event where one of the pairs in contention was the Paris Olympics mixed team bronze medall Sarabjot Singh and Olympian Rhythm Sangwan.
Sejal also combined with another GSC cadet Anjali Mahendra Bhagwat, 16, and Major Anuja Verma, who is not part of GSC, to win a bronze medal in the women’s 25-metre pol event.
“These girls will train with us till they are 21 years old. But given two years of solid technical training with sports science support at Mhow, they will very much be in line for the 2028 LA (Los Angeles) Olympics. The 2026 Asian Games may be a little too ambitious for this batch. But winning quota places for LA 2028 in 2027 is definitely on the cards,” says Colonel Chalasani.
In Pune, they are focussing on the long term — the 2032 Olympics or even the 2036 Games, for which India has submitted a hosting bid. The coaches there are still identifying the discipline that suits them the best, like in athletics or the weight category they would be comfortable in.
“These are not just 24 girls. These are 24 lives, 24 women, 24 possible Olympians, 24 excellent human beings… the Olympics is just a landmark,” Major Rana says. “For me or this institute, we are taking care of these girls who have left their parents behind. If they want to go for NDA (National Defence Academy), they can go for NDA, I have not told them they have to become an Olympian.”
But the Olympics are on every girl’s mind, both in Mhow and in Pune. In a few months, there will be another round of rigorous tests at both Mhow and Pune to induct another batch of girls into the scheme.
Those words — pehle se aisa hi chal raha hai — are not used around these parts anymore.

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