ISLAMABAD, March 8 (Xinhua) -- Iqra Rehman has been financially supporting his parents besides bearing the expenses of the education of her younger sisters for the last five years through the earnings from table tennis.

"Table tennis not only enables me to share the burden of my father, a lower-middle-class shopkeeper, but also helped me face challenges of domestic violence and taste my share of success in northwest Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province," Rehman said in a conversation with Xinhua.

Sharing her story, the 23-year-old said that in 2015 she started playing table tennis secretly at the school level because women in her family were not allowed to play sports, but when she got selected for the provincial team after two years, both domestic violence to stop her playing and acknowledgment to soar her higher came her way.

"Table tennis gave me wings to fly. It gave me the resilience to face challenges, so I did not give up because I knew that if I stood up for myself and challenged the conservativeness of my society, I will pave way for many other women to choose the career of their choice."

Rehman's passion finally won, and now many women from her family and her community are playing different sports, including table tennis, and her own parents are the biggest supporters of her game.

The player won many accolades at the national and international levels, including two bronze medals at two events in the Junior South Asian Table Tennis Championships in 2015 and 2016 in a row.

She is now a core player of the Pakistan army's table tennis team, under which she became the first woman from her province to win three gold medals in a championship in 2019.

"I am now eyeing playing Olympics, for which I am seeking an opportunity to play and get trained in China because playing under the coaches who produce the world's best table tennis players will enhance my skills and enable me to win big matches," Rehman told Xinhua.

The game is also getting extremely popular among young school girls who play it at the school level and compete with other students, and many of them also plan to adopt table tennis as a profession in the future.

After winning a match at the inter-board table tennis championship recently held in sports club Islamabad, where 37 boards from across the country participated, Arbab Sajid from the Lahore board told Xinhua that table tennis is helping her a lot to maintain a healthy lifestyle and has a peaceful mind.

"I started playing table tennis at the age of eight, and since then, it has been an important part of my life. At a young age, I traveled to half of Pakistan for matches, and I want to explore the world through it after I became a professional player," the 14-year-old told Xinhua.

She said that the game gives them a strong sense of completion, plays a great role in physical development, and teaches them to keep on fighting till the end.

Raheela Kashif Satti, Pakistan's table tennis veteran, started playing the game in 1987, and since then, it has not only remained a source of income for her but also given her acknowledgment in her country.

The veteran, who is now running a table tennis academy in Islamabad, told Xinhua that "when I look back at my life, table tennis remained the most important part of it. I believe I would not have been such a strong and independent woman if the game was not there in my life."

Satti said in her academy, she trains her teenage daughters and younger girls to motivate them to adopt a healthy lifestyle.

"After the technology revolution, it is hard to motivate kids to play sports because they are more interested in playing games on mobile or other screens, so I believe that table tennis is the best way to make young kids, especially girls play sports because it gradually builds stamina and even after a few matches kids develop an interest in it," she added. Enditem

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