She had just lost a close Asian Games semifinal to Indonesia’s Sumaya, despite coming within five points of a place in the final, leading 7-4 in the decider. Just then, Sumaya took a time out, the momentum swung in those seconds, and the 24-year-old Indian conceded eight straight points before losing 12-7, 9-12, 7-12 at the Nagoya City Higashi Sports Centre.The disappointment of missing out on a final lingered. But she hasn’t run out of chances. D’Souza has two opportunities to win a bronze medal on Sunday, in singles and mixed doubles. And there is something remarkable about the fact that she is here at all.Four years ago, D’Souza was not a teqball player. Almost nobody in India was. Today, she is one of around 180 registered Indian players, representing the country at the Asian Games in one of the sport’s first appearances on the continent’s biggest sporting stage. “I always wanted to play for India,” she says. “That has always been my dream, no matter which sport.”It could have been athletics. D’Souza ran the 1500m and 3000m at state level before turning to football, representing Maharashtra. Then, while recovering from a ligament injury, she found something unexpected on Instagram. “I was scrolling and watched Ronaldinho play teqball,” she says. She tried it. “From day one, I fell in love with the sport. I thought it was for me.”There was another sign. The teqball logo has a Q in it. “Teqball’s logo, the Q, is what I feel is Quimcy,” she says. “So I think the sport is for me and I want to keep going.”A couple of friends in Mumbai had found a club. D’Souza got in touch and a small group began playing. There was no established Indian pathway, no professional ecosystem and no guarantee that the sport would take them anywhere.Covid disrupted its early growth. It was only around 2022 that the Indian group began to build in earnest.Since then, they have largely built it themselves. “For the last four years, we’ve not been funded,” D’Souza says. “We’re paying for tournaments, we work full time, and then we save that money up for tournaments.”Story continues below this adThe three Indians in Nagoya — D’Souza, Mohamed Anas Imran Beg and Declan Gonsalves — are not products of a conventional professional sporting system. They are part-time athletes with full-time lives. D’Souza works as a test engineer at Decathlon in Bengaluru; her teammates have their own careers. They train, compete and help build the sport around their jobs.Which makes the scale of the Asian Games experience difficult to ignore. “For the first time, I think, when everything was sponsored from India, IOA…” D’Souza says, trailing off as she tries to describe the difference.There is no established Indian teqball coaching system either. So the players teach themselves. “When we go for international tournaments, we look at other players, what teams come up, what they do, how they perform,” D’Souza says. “We come back, look at their videos and train and adapt it to our style.”That is how a sport with roughly 180 registered players has produced an Asian Games semi-finalist. It is also why Saturday’s defeat to Sumaya offered a glimpse of the challenge ahead.Indonesia has a natural advantage India does not: sepak takraw. The sports are different, but the crossover is obvious. Teqball is a game of touch and control, with players using their feet, thighs, chest and head to manipulate a ball on a curved table. Sepak takraw players spend years developing precisely those instincts. “Sepak Takraw already gives you the touch,” D’Souza says. “They have better touches and better outlooks. But I think, like I said before, the game doesn’t matter. We are here by our own.”Story continues below this adIndeed. There was no generation of Indian teqballers to inherit from. No packed domestic circuit producing hundreds of players. No established coaching structure. There was Instagram, a few friends in Mumbai, international tournaments where they watched better players and then returned home to copy them, and full-time jobs that helped pay for the next competition.And, although the gold is lost, there is still an Asian Games medal within reach. For D’Souza, the disappointment of Saturday was therefore about more than one lost semifinal. She looked distraught because the opportunity was real. But so is the second chance.“No matter what the result, I am going to bounce back,” she says.