Dharani Niroshan on the tennis court and (inset) during the Rupane interview
Toronto-based Rupane web magazine this week presents two Sri Lanka origin teenage girls, Dharani Niroshan and Amavi Weerakoon, poised to make waves in the fields of tennis and arts.
Fourteen-year-old Dharani Niroshan said during the interview that she is hoping to the best tennis player in the world. Looking at young Dharani’s exploits on the tennis courts in Canada and abroad at a relatively young age and the honours she had earned so far, her dream doesn’t look beyond her reach. Every professional tennis player in the world had started their careers like her from relative anonymity to global fame.
At 14 years of age she is the youngest player in Tennis Canada’s under 16 squad and was the winning half of under 12 and under 14 national women’s championships conducted by Tennis Canada.
Dharani who was born in Scarborough to Sri Lankan parents caught the eye of Canada Tennis after winning a junior tournament in New York when she was just 11. “After that I was selected to go to Turkey for the world junior masters. I started playing in the provincials and got selected to play the nationals as my ranks increased,” she told Dharindya Abeyratne and Tharindya Abeyratne, the two teenage presenters of the Rupane web magazine’s programme featuring young Sri Lankan talent in Toronto.
Talking about her education, Dharani, who speaks fluent Sinhala, says she is mostly home-schooled as her extensive travelling to play tennis abroad doesn’t leave her enough time to attend school.
“I train eight hours a day and travel to other countries playing tennis often. The best thing about travelling is I get to meet professional players and learn a lot of from them,” says Dharani who has met players like Venus Williams and Canadian sensation Eugenie Bouchard and many other heartthrobs whom she had seen in action. She trains in the same tennis courts where aspiring Canadian players like 19-year-old Denis Shapovalov and teen sensation Bianca Andreescu, 18, practice.
Shapovalov who is ranked among the world’s top 50 players fell to Novak Djokovic at the Australian Open’s third round in the fourth set while Andreescu beat Venus Wliiams at the ASB Classic in New Zealand and entered the Aussie Open but was defeated by Latvian world No. 12 Anastasija Sevastova, two sets to one.
Dharani says from her young age she took part many sports activities and opted to take up tennis as she believed that it was her game. “I wouldn’t have achieved so much and come so far in this sport without the untiring support of my parents and my coaches,” says Dharani.
Sonya Jeyaseelan, former Canadian professional tennis player is the only other female player with Sri Lankan roots. Sonya who ranked world’s No. 48 in 2000 was born in Vancouver to an Indian father and a Sri Lankan mother.
Aspiring artist to donate her show earnings to charity
Eighteen-year-old Amavi Weerakoon told the Rupane interview that she was born in Sri Lanka and came to Canada as a three-year-old child.
She is a grade 12 student and is an aspiring artist who hopes to hold an exhibition and donate proceeds to help the under-privileged children in her country of birth.
It was her class teacher who discovered the ‘secret artist’ in the young kid. Amavi says she was shy to show her arts to her friends but one day after her teacher went through her sketch book accidentally, she was assigned with 40 students from two schools to paint a mural at the Aaniin Community Centre in Markham, Ontario, depicting Native American culture. “We had to attend several forums to study Aboriginal arts and the symbolism behind it. It was quite a difficult project and many students dropped out due to time constraints but I continued till it was completed, learning lot of things about the Native American art forms. I am very happy to see and hear how people appreciate the mural.”
Amavi, who speaks fluent Sinhala, has even earned money by selling her paintings and posters and other art works. One of her charcoal self-potrait had been selected for an arts exhibition held at Toronto City Hall.
She thanks her class teacher, who she names only as Miss Lee, and her parents, for creating an interest in arts. “When I started painting as a little kid my parents encouraged me providing painting material and in the school I was shy to show my arts to other kids but everything changed when the class teacher went through my sketch book one day,” said Amavi. She hopes to enter the university to pursue arts and graphic design and plans to write books using her own illustrations. – Somasiri Munasinghe
(Rupena is a Toronto-based weekly Sinhala web magazine. The broadcast covering Sri Lankan community news and personalities contributing to the success in various areas of Canadian life is presented by Weeratech Creations).
