Walter D'Souza

A member of the Indian Field Hockey Team that took the gold medal at the 1948 Olympic competition, Walter D'Souza's athletic career lasted around two decades. He was blessed with a strong physique and easily attracted notice on both the hockey and football fields. In 1943 he joined the Lusitanian Hockey Team and helped them take the Provincial Cup, the Lewis Cup, the Willie Fernandes Trophy and second place in the competition for the field hockey Aga Khan Trophy. That same year, he also joined the Young Goans Football club and won his first of three successive Nadkarni Cups with the team. He captained the Lusitanians in 1944 and 1945, winning the Aga Khan Trophy and achieving second place for the Lewis Cup. In 1952, he began playing soccer for Bombay and in 1954 and 1955 he captained the city's field hockey team. As captain of the India Culture League, he won the Indian Football Association's Shield; it was the first time a team outside of Calcutta had won the honor and brought the trophy to Bombay. He left the Lusitanians in 1956 to play for the Burmah Shell Sports Club for three years and continued to play for various teams on and off through 1968. He represented Bombay in national games for many years and toured with the Indian team in Sri Lanka, East Africa, and throughout India.

Walter was born in Mbale, Uganda, East Africa, on 16 December 1920, where his father worked for the British government. His parents were Thomas Epifanio de Souza from Aldona and Lucy de Souza from Porvorim. He returned to India as a young boy to pursue his education, passing the Senior Cambridge examination from St. Joseph E.H. School in Bangalore. It was while he was a schoolboy in Bangalore that he started playing hockey; sources describe him as taking to hockey and football "as the duck takes to water." In the early 1940s he played for a club called the Bangalore Blues. He then moved to Bombay and joined The Times of India and played both hockey and soccer for them. He subsequently joined the Lusitanians, a Goan hockey team that in years to come fielded several Olympians including fellow Olympians Leo Pinto, Maxi Vaz, Reggie Rodrigues and Amir Kumar. He was considered the team's "tower of strength".

The Bakshi Bahaddar Jiva Kerkar State Award For Excellence In Sports By The Government Of Goa. The city of Mumbai honored him by founding the Walter de Sousa Garden near the Metro Cinema in 1993.