23 year old Table Tennis Soumyajit Ghosh became the third Indian to win a men's singles title at an ITTF Challenge Series or ITTF World Tour tournament, when he won the singles title at the recently held 2017 ITTF Challenge Chile Open, in Santiago. He, along with Anthony Amalraj, won the men's doubles title, marking the first occasion of India winning a double's title in an ITTF tournament.

This ace student of MLR sports academy beat Daher Juan and Cifuentes Horacino, both from Argentina, in successive rounds to enter the semifinals. In the semifinals, he faced Phillip Floritz from Bulgaria and beat him 4-0. In the finals, he defeated Anthony 4-1 to win the Chile Open.

Soumyajit, who is from Siliguri, West Bengal, started the sport at a very young age, having been encouraged by his parents and in 2010, he won the mixed doubles bronze medal at the World Junior Championships in Bahrain and later played a key role in ensuring India's podium finish at the the World Junior Championships in 2011, by winning both his singles matches against South Korea in the quarter-finals. 

His inspiring story continues as just the year later, he became the youngest Indian ever to become the national champion at the 74th National Championships. In the same year, 2012, Soumyajit became the youngest Indian to qualify for the London Olympics. After securing several other titles in the coming years, he also qualified for the 2016 Rio Olympics but lost in the first round.

While we couldn't reach out to Soumyajit -as he's still in Chile, we reached out to his coach at the MLR Sports Academy, Mr. Soumyadeep Roy. "Soumyajit came to Hyderabad this year. He usually trains in Germany but whenever he's in India, he trains at this academy here with me. I'm really proud of his performance at the Asian games and at the Chile open now. We have bigger targets for him now, and we want him to secure a podium finish in the 2020 Olympics," says Soumyadeep, adding, "I'm more of a big brother and mentor to him. We played together in the Indian team earlier."

Rajasekhar Reddy, the secretary of MLR Institutions, expressed his happiness at Soumyajit's win and said the sports academy would continue extending support to the player. "I feel very happy that a student of our academy won a prestigious event like this. I hope he secures a medal at the 2020 Olympics. It is very inspiring for us (the management) and we are planning on expanding our academy by building facilities for several other sports. We want to see a lot of olympians from our academy," said Mr. Rajasekhar Reddy.