2023 World champion Aditi Gopichand Swami’s success ignited the passion for archery in Maharashtra, says national archery coach.
World champion in para archery Sheetal Devi and teenage recurve archers from Maharashtra hogged the limelight at the Senior National Archery Championships, held at Hyderabad from December 10 to 19. The overall results of the domestic competition suggest a shift in power from Jharkhand to Maharashtra.
Maharashtra’s 16-year-old recurve archer Sharvari Somnath Shende, the World under-18 women’s individual champion, made a bold statement by clinching her maiden senior women’s individual title in a competitive field that included Olympians Deepika Kumari, Ankita Bhakat and Bhajan Kaur.
Resurgence of 2023 World champions Aditi Gopichand Swami and Ojas Pravin Deotale in compound events suggested that Maharashtra is fast becoming an archery powerhouse in the country.
Para archer Sheetal also made a bold statement as she competed with able bodied players, finishing a creditable 12th in the women’s compound event.
Mushrooming of private academies across Maharashtra has contributed to the success of the state’s archers at the national level, says Kumal Taware, an archery coach from Pune.
The 30 years old Taware is the coach of 2025 national recurve individual champion Sharvari. “Archery is quite popular in Maharashtra and parents are coming forward to support their children,” Taware said. Parents are willing to financially support their archer kids to purchase costly equipment ranging between Rs 2 lakh and Rs 3 lakh. “There are as many as four private academies in the region where I train budding archers,” Taware added. “Each centre has as many as 30 archers.”
Speaking on future plans of talented Sharvari, Taware said she (Sharvari) will compete in junior as well as senior level in 2026. “But the main target will be to shoot good average scores in all competitions in 2026,” the archery coach said over the phone from Pune.
Sharvari, according to Taware, started training for archery when she was an eight year-old student. “She has been competing at junior and senior international levels and claimed the world cadet title earlier this year in Canada,” the coach said. “But she is yet to make a big impression at senior international level.”
Taware is running a non-residential private academy on the outskirts of Pune. “We have around 30 archers in the age group of 14 to 17 years in our academy,” the archery coach said. The coach from Pune is hopeful that not just his academy but also from other parts of the region will produce world class archers in the coming years.
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