Kovai Marathon is slowly becoming a regular annual event in the Coimbatore calendar and Kovai Marathon 2008 was more dazzling and receptive than ever. Kovai Marathon 2008 organised by Tamil Nadu Atheletic Association jointly with Aircel and Environmental Cell Division, PWD recorded 945 participants and thereby made a new record. The event was a grand spectacle on Sunday, February 03 2008 and SNSCE is proud that it made a small contribution towards the success of the event.
SNSCE played two roles with respect to Kovai Marathon 2008. Exactly 32 students of SNSCE were a part of this race and a half a dozen volunteer team performed with elan the most critical of the jobs.
A six member volunteer team comprising of Pon.Rathnavel - Lecturer, D.Saravanamoorthy - Physical Director, P.Gopalakrishnan - Office Assistant and students Sajjad Khan, S.Vignesh, V.Lawrence (all EEE) was bestowed with the responsibility of providing the marathon runners with bun, egg and water at the end of the race and collect their numbers. The team planned well, organised better and executed to their best and had no single participant waiting. They responded to the participants even before they could send an eye signal. Even when there was a thronging crowd, the team was fitting to the task and avoided any hiccupps or contrevorsies. The organisers had a special praise for the volunteers team during the valedictory ceremony.
SNSCE was perhaps the only engineering institute with more than 10 participants. There were 32 students interested to go the distance(15 kilometres) and all of them were first time runners. P.Raja of ECE was very unlucky as he finished the race in 15th place, five below the prize margin. He was followed by S.Ramachandran(ECE), N.Gopinath (EEE), G.Vivek (EEE), K.Prakash (EEE), M.Vignesh (CSE), L.Maikannan (CSE), S.M.Ramesh (ECE), J.Arun Kumar (ECE) and A.P.Sathish (IT) all of whom finished within the top 50.
Predictably, Pudhukottai Sports Clubs made a clean sweep in the competetion. The chief coach of the Kavinadu Atheletic Association Mr.Loganathan whose club won a record 24 prizes happened to be a coach of our Physical Director Mr.D.Saravanamoorthy. A renowned person in the field of atheletics coaching, Mr.Loganathan spent some ten minutes with the boys and gave them valuable tips on preparing for track events.
Later the participants and volunteers worked in tandem with the authorities to disperse the flagpoles and flags and earned special appreciation from one and all. It was hard work for the students and volunteers from 05.00 hrs to 11.00 hrs and when you taught these people were off to a well deserved rest - they were getting ready to trail a blaze for the intramural cricket finals, which was to start at 14.00 hrs.
