Freeman bags top two awards in Milo contest

CEBU, Philippines - The Freeman lensman Reynan Villena swept the top two spots in photo contest of the 18th Milo Little Olympics Visayas Regional Finals held last week at the Cebu City Sports Center.

Villena’s winning photo featured rising athletic star Mary Joy Loberanis of the University of San Carlos-Basic Education (USC-BED) in her golden showing in elementary girls’ 4x100m relay event of athletics competition.

It was Loberanis’ fifth gold in the two-weekend sports conclave that drew the best developmental athletes in the region.

Interestingly, the story of assistant sports editor Lemuel P. Maglinte about Loberanis’ sterling performance entitled “Golden glow at the tracks: When girls run faster, swifter than boys” placed second in the sportswriting contest.

In his article, Maglinte emphasized that Loberanis maybe one of the smallest runners on the field but she proved too great for her size, raking in a total of five gold medals that helped catapult USC-BED to athletics glory in the Milo Olympics.

Aside from her size, the 11-year-old Loberanis also proved that gender doesn’t matter in pursuit of sporting excellence as she ruled the elementary girls 1,500m run with the best time of 5:24.38, amazingly faster by 11 seconds than Adan Bryan Almento of Pardo ES, who clocked in only 5:35.63 to snare the gold medal in the boys’ category.

Maglinte pointed out that even if men are generally considered more powerful than women in many fields, there are those who defy conventional wisdom, such as female athletes outpacing their male rivals just like what Loberanis did.

Aside from trophies, Villena, Maglinte and sports editor Manny Villaruel received a total cash prize of P35,000 for their feat. — EBV (FREEMAN)