Female athletes and sportspersons, including cricketers, are now becoming popular in India but when it comes to coaching, apart from a few firsts, it's still the old boys' club
Maymol Rocky played for India for six years. She then became the first female head coach of the national football team
Becoming the first ever female head coach of the Indian women’s football team was not a cakewalk for Maymol Rocky. The 41-year-old created history in 2017 when she was handed over the reins.
Coming from a family of sports fanatics from Dabolim in Goa, Rocky had started playing football as a child. Her mother was not in favour of it because she was concerned about Rocky getting hurt. “My brother was a football player. My father was also into sports and always encouraged me to take it up. But mom was difficult,” she says. Rocky was 10 years old and in the fifth grade when she joined the Sports Authority of India academy in Margao, Goa. “I was an athlete there for ten years,” she recollects.
(This story appears in the 16 July, 2021 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)