On track of success: Sri Lankan women in sport are leading the way with mentorship

Originally published on Pahana Light & Life

Written by Mrinal Asija a graduate of the Change Our Game Women in Sports Media Program.

Representation is a powerful tool, and so is mentorship. To have someone with a shared identity find success in a field can hand you the keys to a path you never thought was accessible and a mentor can be your compass along the way.

Anula Costa, a former Sri Lankan national long jump champion who has worked as a high-performance coach and official with Athletics Australia for over two decades, is playing these roles for the Sri Lankan community.

A word that Anula uses a lot is ‘pathway’. It was a combination of right guidance and her attitude to embrace opportunities that set the girl from Negombo on the journey to become the first Sri Lankan woman to officiate at the Paralympics.

“I was a physical education teacher and Mr. KLF Wijedasa identified that I had the talent to become a good coach and needed to get educated. He kept me in his house when I did the level one coaching course. I’m here because of him. He is like my second father,” Anula credits her mentor for not letting a career-ending hamstring injury in 1983 snap her ties with athletics – a fate most her contemporaries accepted at the end of their playing careers.

Anula moved to Australia to study Sports Science in 1998. Two years later, she would find herself involved as a technical official at the Sydney Paralympics. From there started Anula’s association with para-athletics that would see her coach a Paralympic gold medallist – Kelly Cartwright – and lead the Paralympics pathway program for war-wounded Sri Lankan army soldiers.

Anula began coaching Cartwright two years after her amputation. The Geelong-born athlete faced challenges earlier on but Anula pushed her to continue, and she went on to win two medals at the 2012 London Games.

“She would say ‘I don't want to do this. I'm ashamed, people are looking at me.’ But I never gave up. I told her ‘People are not looking at you. People are looking at their children. Let's go’,” Anula recounts how she persisted in encouraging Cartwright to not let her disability make her give up sport before helping fundraise her first prosthetic running leg.

The drive to help budding athletes find the right path and instil in them the belief to keep working hard comes from her own journey.

“Mr. Wijedasa’s encouragement and mentorship was very important for me, and I am doing the same thing here in Australia for athletes,” Anula said.

Anula has been recognised with the Athletics Australia Junior Coach of the Year Award in 2018, and she is also a coach educator and high-performance women mentor.

2024 Victorian Government research found that while women are underrepresented as coaches and officials, children who have had a woman as a coach were more likely to associate a woman as 'looking' like a coach, making their representation at the community level crucial.

Lalani Sirimanne and Hansi Perera are amongst those taking the lead on that front.

Lalani, an investment manager, excelled in athletics growing up in Sri Lanka. While she plays team sports socially in Melbourne, she completed a beginner-level coaching program to train her teenage son, who is now competing at national level.

Hansi, an electrical engineer, leads the Musaeus College Past Pupil Association’s teams in inter-school carnivals. She passes on the same encouragement that she received from her coaches to her teammates – win or lose, you should never back away from trying!

This piece was produced in collaboration with the Victorian Government’s Office for Women in Sport and Recreation.