Cebu making big moves

CEBU CITY, Philippines  – The Cebu City Sports Commission (CCSC) continues to advance rapidly by leaps and bounds in its effort to develop its massive grassroots development program all over the province. The next few months will bring to fruition several months of planning to boost sports in city-supported free programs.

Beginning April 11 and through its Sports Institute based at the San Nicolas Sports Complex, CCSC will hold free summer sports clinics in 44 barangays in the province, in 12 different sports: boxing, taekwondo, table tennis, badminton, chess, arnis, volleyball, tennis and basketball among them. Forty-four barangays have already signed on to host the clinics, with more than a dozen others waiting to get onboard. Six public school gyms have already assented to partner with the CCSC for the summer. Aside from their pool of 60 volunteer coaches, CCSC will also deploy over 500 volunteers. The target is over 10,000 underprivileged children to benefit from the program.

“This is our commitment to the youth of Cebu,” pledges CCSC chairman Ed Hayco, the man responsible for the awesome growth of dancesport in the province and southern Philippines. “Thanks to the support of the city government and all those who have sacrificed so much to help our youth and give them something to aim for.”

At Thursday’s regular meeting of the commission, Team Cebu City Dancesport also arrived to thank the CCSC and pay their respects.

After focusing on their grassroots development program in the far reaches of the province, the team focused once again on regaining its dominance in the national dancesport ranking competitions. Last week, Cebu won 19 of 26 gold medals at the ranking competitions held in Metro Manila. A few years ago, they won 25 out of 26. The team has also won hundreds of medals in international competitions with the support of Filipino communities in the US. Last year, Filipinos formed a 70-car caravan to escort the team from Los Angeles through Las Vegas and to San Francisco.

Some of the dancers have benefited greatly from Hayco’s vision of cascading down their blessings. Dancers have been trained for free, providing they agree to “pay it forward” in a similar fashion. One of the champion dancers, a pretty 13-year old student, has been teaching since she was nine, and has trained, in her estimation, roughly 4,000 youngsters.

This kind of sacrifice – not to mention the years of spending considerable sums out of his own pocket quietly, are now paying off for Hayco’s dream. The city is fully backing their sports programs, which reach remote mountain barangays two or three hours’ drive from the city. This spirit of volunteerism resulted in the Guinness World Record-setting dancesport class three years ago, where 7,770 dancers performed in unison.

Cebu has also been working closely with the Philippine Sports Commission, and supports various PSC projects, including sending athletes to various competitions, such as a coming youth baseball tournament in Metro Manila supported by com. Jolly Gomez. CCSC’s next big project is the Cebu Festival, a weeklong sports-themed celebration at the breathtaking new, 300-hectare South Road Project developed by the city. As of now, close to 20 sports have already confirmed participation, with the various national sports associations (NSAs) pitching in and some even joining forces.

“This is an exciting and challenging project,” admits com. Brian Lim, owner of the world record-setting fireworks company PyroWorks and head of the project committee. “We are hoping that this will become important to the city in a similar way like Sinulog.” Last year, over 80,000 people watched the different events.

Cebu was also the site of this week’s Alaska Junior NBA clinics, where the most skilled boys will be brought to Metro Manila for a national training in April. Carlo Singson, senior marketing manager of NBA Asia, paid a courtesy call to Hayco and the two agreed in principle to find ways to work together for future NBA and basketball events.

“It’s great that Cebu has made grassroots sports development a priority,” says Singson, who has been pushing for the establishment of an NBA office in the Philippines for years. “Their blueprint is remarkable.”

CCSC also has some goals for the medium- and long-term, such as becoming overall champion in the Palarong Pambansa in the next couple of years, and having a Cebuano athlete win an Olympic medal by 2020.

So far, by working together and being generous of their time, energy and resources with no political agenda, the commission’s members have achieved all the goals they have set. Cebu has made long strides in setting the example for how sports can be managed, and they’ve only just begun.