Rani Rampal

Rani Rampal (born 4 December, 1994) [1] [2]  is an  Indian  field hockey player. At the age of 15, she was the youngest player in the national team which participated in the  2010 World Cup. ==Early life ==

Rani was born on 4 December 1994 in Shahbad in the Kurukshetra district of Haryana to a poor family. Her father works a cart-puller. She took to field hockey in 2003 and trained at the Shahbad Hockey Academy under Dronacharya Award winner Baldev Singh.[3]  As she started to play professionally, GoSports Foundation, a sports non-governmental organization provided her with monetary and non-monetary support as her family found it hard to support her dreams financially.[4] ==Career ==

Rani played in the Champion's Challenge Tournament held in Kazan, Russia in June, 2009 and powered India to a win by scoring 4 goals in the finals. She was adjudged “The Top Goal Scorer” and the “Young Player of the Tournament.” [5]

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.190340042114258px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:12.727272033691406px;">She was instrumental in winning the silver medal for the Indian team in the Asia Cup held in Nov 2009. After playing with India's national team at 2010 Commonwealth Games and 2010 Asian Games, Rani Rampal was included in the FIH Women's All Star Team of 2010. She was also included the All Star team of the Asian Hockey Federation based on her performance in 2010 Asian Games at Guangzhou, where the Indian team finished fourth.

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.190340042114258px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:12.727272033691406px;">At the 2010 Women’s Hockey World Cup held in Rosario, Argentina, she scored a total of seven goals which placed India in the ninth position in World Women's hockey rankings. This is India's best performance since 1978. She is the only Indian to be nominated for the FIH Women's Young Player of the Year Award, 2010. She was conferred the “Best Young Player of the Tournament” award at the Women's Hockey World Cup 2010, recognizing her stellar performance as the top field goal scorer in the tournament.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-6" style="line-height:1em;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[6]

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.190340042114258px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:12.727272033691406px;">She was also adjudged the 'Player of the Tournament' at the 2013 Junior World Cup which India finished with a bronze medal.