Valentina Parola is 20 years old, she is from Rosario, and she was the only girl who signed up for the regional “Centro” of the Argentine University Games. Accustomed from a very young age to play against boys, she gave herself the luxury of defeating them all at the table of the most federal tournament in university sports.
This is one more example of the importance of federal and inclusive competition with gender parity with an organization in charge of the Ministry of Education of the Nation, headed by Jaime Perczyk, through the Undersecretary for Strengthening Student Trajectories of the Secretariat of University Policies in conjunction with the Federation of Argentine University Sports (FeDUA).
His passion for this discipline began when he was eleven years old and arose from wanting to keep up with his teammates who always beat him. Since then she knew that she was equal to men, that she just had to practice more to beat them.
“I told my mom, please take me somewhere to train because I want to beat them”he explained. That appreciation of the female gender that she felt inside of her was the cornerstone on which a particular prowess in table tennis was built.
From there, he began to walk the path: “At first my dad took me to play in a bar, because he didn’t know where he trained, just that day there was a tournament and I came out champion, that’s when the organizer told me to go practice at the Japanese association”.
From that moment on, she did not stop overcoming sporting challenges, two months after starting training, she was summoned to participate in a national tournament: “I finished third, but it seems a bit crazy to me because it was burning the stage of the athlete who is forming.”
However, there is no harm that it does not come for good, because thanks to that they began to call her every year and when she turned thirteen she played another national tournament that, thanks to her good performance in it, earned her the call to the Argentine team .
Valentina remembers those years: “when I started playing internationally, I qualified as a paddle two”, for those who do not know about this sport, this is a very important achievement because the modality of calling the national team is done through a tournament that compete for the top ten players according to the national ranking and only four managed to represent the country and she was consecrated second.
“It is not easy to develop in Argentina, it is increasingly difficult to travel to tournaments and table tennis is not very widespread, when you classify a South American, it is most likely that you will be passed over due to the lack of international contact”, he reflects while his chest swells with pride at having to do everything on his own.
She also tells us that she does not consider it an achievement to have beaten the men because she is used to it “this sport is very inclusive, I understand that it may seem strange for a girl to beat all the boys, but we are used to facing each other”.
The truth is that Valentina managed to qualify for the national instance of the JUAR and you can appreciate all her potential to become a world table tennis star.
Once again, sport works as a tool for training and social inclusion, the ability of the different disciplines to amalgamate interpersonal ties from an early age, lays the foundations for a fairer and less hostile society towards minorities.
