Hyacinth Wijesinghe - now a fulltime netball coach

by Upananda Jayasundera - Kandy Sports Special Corr.

Remember Hyacinth Wijesinghe who had a rare chance of captaining the Asian Netball Team in 1990, is a fulltime netball coach at present.

After her primary education at Kegalle Convent, she entered Mahamaya Girls College, Kandy on a scholarship and she learnt sports under Manel Weerasinghe - the then Games Teaching of Mahamaya. She was equally good in netball, basketball and in athletics too, and excelled in the first two sports and represented Sri Lanka in both Netball and Basketball. After sometime, Hyacinth concentrated in Netball though she captained the National Basketball team too. Netball really caught the fancy of Hyacinth and she functioned as National Netball Coach for two years. She also worked as a coach in the Singapore Sports School for two years.

Netball fans will remember Hyacinth Wijesinghe as a forceful netball player who represented Sri Lanka for many years and was also selected for the Asian Netball Team in 1985. In the year 2000 under her coaching, Sri Lanka became Asian Champions, beating Singapore in the final. After working for a short spell as secretary at Ports Authority, she has now got up an Academy and running a Netball academy at Gampaha and Colombo. She intends widening her netball academy to Kandy too in the near future.