Best Wishes - India Festival

Nirja Patel, a Swim Athlete
Nirja Patel, a 7th grade student at
Independent Day School in carrollwood has
already collected numerous
honors in short course and long
course swimming competitions
throughout the state of Florida.
She started swimming at the
age of five and has participated
in major swim meets for past
three years. Nirja got her first
breakthrough on 07/07/07 during a major
swim meet held at Brandon where she finished
50M breaststroke in 45.61 seconds and
qualified for Florida State Junior Olympics
(FLJO) of the year 2007. She attended
FLJO in July’ 07 and again qualified for 2008
FLJO and participated in 50M and 100M
breaststroke events at the University of
Florida, Gainesville. Nirja has also participated
in West Zone FL championship held at St.
Petersburg, where she got gold medal for the
first place in 100Y breaststroke and silver
medal for the second place in 50Y freestyle.
In last six months Nirja has received eight
Reading
By Punnet
major championship medals for securing top
three positions and thirty seven ribbons for
the placement in top eight.
Nirja is an avid breaststroker
and her current seeded ranking
in the FL state is third for 50M,
100M and 200M breastroke.
She does four to five miles of
swimming every day while
receiving her training from
Sickles High school (2007 state champions)
coach, Scott Parlett, a national champion of
freestyle and breaststroke events. Nirja has
received many invitations and offers to swim
with high school senior girls’ swim teams and
various other swim teams of the Tampa bay
area.
Along with swimming, Nirja loves mathematics
and science. She participated in Duke
University TIP program and scored 99th percentile
in last two years in a row. We congratulate
Nirja for her achievements and wishing
her future success.
“The true source of rights is duty” 67