#9 @ Palaro #whathappened?

When the initial team standings from the end of the Palarong Pambansa was posted, I thought I saw that we were number eight, only to find out that the Central Visayas ranked ninth. Number nine? Lucky nine? Basta, nine! When this was confirmed, I knew that this wasn’t going to be good news for the Cebu and Central Visayas sports community. As an economic unit, the Central Visayas can easily make the top three or two in the country. Aren’t we the favored region outside of Manila? Isn’t our economy booming with its nice mix of manufacturing, services and tourism? Let’s face it. Outside of Manila, we are proud to be the top region. No other region can beat us. I now stand corrected. Eight other regions are better than us in sports. If one doesn’t count the NCR, then make that seven regions beating us in the medal standings of the Palaro. These regions were Calabarzon, West Visayas, Negros Island Region, North Mindanao, SOCCSKARGEN, Davao and the CARAA. I understand losing to the likes of CALABARZON and the West Visayas, but I can’t accept how we fared worse than the other regions. Even SOCCSKARGEN and CARAA did better than us? No offense to our friends there but how could they have done better?

As they say, it’s back to square one for us, and yes I mean all of us. It’s easy to point fingers at the Department of Education regional office but it’s useless. We already know that the DepEd can’t manage a comprehensive sports program by themselves and need the assistance of the other members of the sports community if we want to improve our performance. I’ve said it many times before and I’ll say it again. The DepEd is good in so far as the paper works are concerned. They have a complete compilation of the laws, memos, documents and papers needed to implement the system that runs the Palarong Pambansa network. It all starts from the lowest level of school intramurals to the unit, district, division, regional and national levels at the Palaro that serves as the final stop. The sad news is that all these documents and papers can’t talk and perform for the actual athletes. It’s just that: all paper but no action. What we need is a true sports program that includes both the running of competitions and more importantly the taking care of athletes and their need to train under a legitimate training program. I’m afraid the DepEd has focused only on the running of competitions per se, and have forgotten to run a training program for athletes. At this point, we’re not going to demand for a training program from them anymore. The DepEd doesn’t have the qualified set of coaches and sports managers who can implement such a big task.

This is where the other partners of the sports community will have to step in. Partners here include the local government units, the local office of the national sports associations and the private sector. The practice before was for the LGUs to provide funding to the DepEd then expect the DepEd to take care of the rest. It now looks like this hasn’t worked, at least at the recent Palaro. And now we get the news that the Cebu City government is pulling out its usual financial aid for the DepEd’s sports projects. This might need to change, aligned with the theme “change is coming.” I’d like to see LGUs working with the private sector and professional coaches to set up and run a training program instead. Let’s leave DepEd to work with what they’re good at: documentation, records, memos et. al. The training and management of athletes component can be handled by another party. But which athletes should be assisted? What events need help? And will the DepEd be willing to accept this arrangement? Will the DepEd allow other coaches to come in and lend a hand? Since the Palaro is won via the Olympic-style medal standings, we’ll need to work on the events that are rich in producing medals. These are the individual events where athletes can win more than just one medal. Team sports like volleyball, basketball, and football can produce only one gold medal. Meanwhile, events like swimming, athletics, taekwondo, archery and gymnastics can produce as many as 30 to 40 gold medals (assuming you win as many events as possible). This will have to be a comprehensive program composed of grassroots with age group development, training, regular competitions, nutrition and sports psychology.

It’s time to stop the finger-pointing and work together as a team. Let’s pray that the DepEd can work with others with the goal of improving our performance at the next Palaro. It’s the only way to go. It things don’t change, then expect us to slip to lower than ninth. Sugot mo ana?