World Scrabble Championships

FIRST SCHOOLGIRL PLAYER TO REPRESENT SL @

Radinka started playing Scrabble by accident when she found that she was below the minimum cut off age for joining the Chess Club of her school, Bishop’s College. Soon after joining the club, Mr Lahiru De Silva who was the coach at the time realised that she may have potential and added her to the school under 15 team when she was just 8 years old.

Having been called for selections in 2013, Radinka made the National Youth Scrabble team in 2014, and she played her first World Youth Scrabble Championships aged 11, emerging 3rd in the under 14 category. Since then she has played for the National Youth team until the present, representing the country at the World Youth Championships each year. The team secured the best team award 3 years running, from 2015 till 2017. In 2018, Radinka secured individual 10th place at the World Youth Championships, becoming the only girl to have come within the top ten since 2015. Lradinka has performed consistently well at the All Island Age-group Scrabble Championships, placing 1st runner up in the under 13 category in 2014, followed by top ten placings in the under 18 category from 2015 till 2019. In 2019, she emerged champion in the under 18 category, becoming

the only girl in Sri Lanka Scrabble’s history to ever win the tournament.

She has done extremely well at National level tournaments, finishing 2nd runner up at the National Scrabble Championships in 2018 and 2nd runner up at the Scrabbler of the year in 2019. In 2016, Radinka was selected to play the Premier Players

Tournament, which is only open to the top eight active players in the country, for the first time. She went on to emerge 2nd runner up and 1st runner up at the tournament in 2018 and 2019 respectively. She has also won the Masters plate division in 2017. Earlier this year, Radinka was selected to represent Sri Lanka as part of the four member National team playing for the World Scrabble Championships in Goa. She is the first schoolgirl and only the 2nd female player ever to have represented Sri Lanka at the tournament.

She overtook former national champion Shaila Amalean in 2017 to secure the title for the highest rated female player in the country, a title which she has retained for the past 3 years.

Currently, she is being coached by her father, who took over that job when she first started playing competitive tournaments.

Radika’s outstanding achievements have made her family as well as her school Bishop’s College extremely proud.

She is the first schoolgirl and only the 2nd female player ever to have represented Sri Lanka at the tournament