NEW DELHI: There is one image from her wrestling journey that Kirtisna Arya remembers with unusual clarity. It was May 2023. She was in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, for the South East Asian (SEA) Games, seven months pregnant with her second child.While most expectant mothers would have been preparing for the final stretch of pregnancy, Kirtisna was spending five consecutive days on a wrestling mat, demonstrating her officiating and judging skills as part of her United World Wrestling (UWW) coaching examination.The examination could not wait. Neither could she. “I was seven months pregnant (with son Darsh) was when I appeared for the Category 1 Level 1 course. For four-five days continuously, I had to be on the mat and demonstrate my skills. I was pregnant, but I was determined to complete the course,” Kirtisna recalls.That determination, more than three years later, has taken the 37-year-old from Uttarakhand to Nagoya — Kirtisna will become the first Indian woman to officiate at the Games, or any of the other major multisport events.Accredited as technical official, Kirtisna will shoulder three responsibilities during the Games: referee bouts, judge matches and serve as mat chairman.“When I received the mail from UWW informing me about my selection, it was a proud moment for the family. My daughter Pannavi was overjoyed,” Kirtisna told TOI.“I never thought I would be selected for the Asian Games,” she said.Krirtisna will leave for Japan on Sept 26. The assignment will keep her away from home for around 10 days, including from three-and-a-half-year-old Darsh. “I know it will be difficult for them, but they will understand what their mother did when they grow up and hopefully take pride in it,” she said.For Kirtisna, the road to Japan has never been about reaching one particular destination. It has been about refusing to step away from wrestling — even when life repeatedly gave her reasons to do so.Kirtisna grew up in Bharatpur village in Haridwar district, in a family where wrestling was deeply woven into everyday life. Father Omveer Singh was a renowned wrestler and a disciple of the legendary Master Chandgi Ram. Yet having a wrestler for a father did not necessarily make it easy for the daughters to become wrestlers. “People would say, ‘Girls are not meant for wrestling. Don’t put your girls there.’ There was a lot of societal pressure,” Kirtisna says.Yet, Kirtisna, the second of three sisters, began wrestling in 2004 after Class X, and her biggest achievement on the mat came at the 2011 Commonwealth Championships in Melbourne, where she won silver in the 59kg category.An ACL tear brought end to her playing career and she quit wrestling in 2013. She completed an NIS coaching diploma in 2010-11 and, in Feb 2014, joined the SAI centre in Bahalgarh, Sonepat, as an assistant coach. Motherhood brought a fresh challenge. Her daughter Pannavi was born in 2016 and that led her to switch to refereeing.