Better–run NSAs top SEAG performers

NAY PYI TAW – Despite the seventh place finish, its worst ever, the Philippines finished fairly above its projection of 25 gold medals, and those who did well in Myanmar have reasons to believe a continuing sports program will make them and others competitive in next year’s Asian Games and in the SEA Games in 2015.

The athletics association, which earned six gold medals under new officer-in-charge Philip Ella Juico, is looking forward to a spring training, from February to April, for 20 athletes in Los Angeles where they will also gain exposure through participation in 20 competitions with American professional and varsity players.

American fitness coach Ryan Flaherty had presented a proposal for consideration by the Philippine Sports Commission, which funded his two-month stay in the Philippines last year to serve as strength and conditioning coach of the entire athletics team.

Ricky Vargas’ boxing team, which had three gold medals, will be maintaining a program without Cuban coaches. It is broadening the selection process through more tournaments for beginners in the countryside and competition for elite athletes in Asian and world championships.

The martial arts of taekwondo (four gold medals), wushu (3), judo (2), and karatedo (1) won on the strength of their training under foreign coaches. The taekwondo association enjoys a broad base for its choice of members of the national pool but still finds the need to train its elite athletes in Korea.

Wushu, judo and karatedo are suffering from a lack of recruits. The most they could assemble for a national pool is 25. Still they made remarkable feats in Myanmar.

Success of the wushu experts was made possible by Chinese coaches, while judokas were trained for two months in Japan under topnotch Japanese coaches. The karatekas had a similar one-month training in Iran where they fought and sparred with Olympic and world champions.

Rep. Bambol Tolentino’s cycling association, which was successful in road racing, is maintaining a continental team in partnership with 7-11 and LPGMA where players get to compete as professionals in UCI (International Cycling Union)-sanctioned events in Asia. In place of foreign training, it is considering a “secret training camp” for its road racers and BMX riders while keeping the Amoranto Sports Complex as its practice base for velodrome racing.

The Philippines could have done better with the stint of former gold medal winners like chesser Wesley So, who studies in the US, boxers Kate Aparri (semi-retirement) and Charly Suarez (shoulder injury), high jumper Maristella Torres (motherhood), poomsae member Camille Alarilla (studies) and taekwondo jins Mark Eddiva and Edward Folayang (UFC professionals).

Still, the Team Philippines’ debacle was due largely to lack of a training program among many national sports associations, which depend on sports patronage from the PSC and the Philippine Olympic Committee. This will be evident again in future SEA Games.

Some associations whose weak training program is due to organizational flaws are sepak takraw, whose president is facing trial, pencak silat, which has yet to pick a successor, and equestrian, weightlifting, table tennis and sailing, whose members can be counted by the fingers for lack of player recruitment program.

Volleyball, despite a good community sports program handled by Shakey’s, is so entrenched in intramurals it doesn’t find the necessity of assembling a national team. A good snooker team cannot be formed because the country has only one snooker table, a deteriorating, warped table at the Rizal Memorial Sports Complex.

Its entry for carom team is Efren “Bata” Reyes, a 10-Ball, 9-Ball expert.

The shooting association had leaders with the resources and dedication to form a national pool but are unable to resolve infighting among four divisions of the association. The association sent two neophytes and one veteran to the Games. They finished outside the top 8 in the eliminations.

Table tennis is also reeling from a leadership crisis involving two claimants to the presidency. The same is true with canoe-kayak. The badminton association was on its way to forming a formidable national team when its national coach from Indonesia had to go back to his country, leaving the training program back to square one. It’s back on its feet with the Philippine Badminton Association Ranking System (PBaRS) tournaments with the support of key officers at the helm – Vice President Jejomar Binay (president), who is in turn supported by business tycoon Manny Pangilinan.

The swimming association could not form a team from swimmers trained at its new base at the Ultra. It turned to a lean team of three foreign-based Fil-Americans and one local boy who contributed three bronze medals, a far cry from the golden days of Eric Buhain and Miguel Molina, in this high-profile, medal-rich sport.

Even with the absence of non-Olympic sports in the SEA Games, it is evidently impossible to finish better than fifth in the coming SEA Games as countries like Thailand, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia and Vietnam have already in place a strong training program which assures them of more gold medals than the Philippines in Olympic or traditional sports. Even a bigger delegation would not assure more gold medals for the country.

Since 2001 when the Philippines won 31 gold medals with the leanest delegation of less than 200, it had been on the decline despite bigger delegations, except in 2005 when, as host, it won an unprecedented 112 with 743 athletes for first place.

It was fourth (49 golds) in 2003 in Vietnam from 448 athletes, sixth in 2007 in Thailand (41) from 620 participants, fifth in Laos (38) from 253 and sixth in Indonesia (36) from 520.

The 2013 contingent could have been reduced significantly with the exclusion of large delegations from women’s basketball (12) and women’s football (20) to avoid the embarrassment of sending a big delegation that wins fewer medals (29).

National sports associations – not the Philippine Olympic Committee or the PSC – are the backbone of Philippine sports. Philippine sports can only be as strong as the NSAs that handle them.

A reality check on Philippine sports indicates that SEA Games sports – Olympic and non-traditional – are run by non-stock, non-profit corporations who have turned into family-run, self-serving private one-man offices or single proprietorships, much like Napoles-run non-government organizations, which have non-existent or powerless board of directors. They use – or in collaboration with government officials – to acquire funds they cannot liquidate. The best-performing associations like athletics, taekwondo, boxing, basketball and cycling are out of the list because they largely depend on their own resources or private funds to run their training programs. Some of the NSAs, particularly the basketball, badminton, and boxing of management expert Pangilinan, run their NSAs in business-like fashion. They are experts of  the management by objectives (MBO), which guides them in identifying specific goals or golds, defining strategies and monitoring myriads of activities with mathematical precision through the PERT-CPM (project evaluation and review technique-critical method), and sourcing out private funds to run their ambitious programs.

A check on the COA reports shows some NSAs using public funds could face charges for malversation for failure to liquidate their advances during the last seven years.

The Supreme Court rules that if an official fails to liquidate, he is presumed to have used the funds for his own personal purposes. The funds benefited the recipient (NSA official) or sometimes also the government officials, but not entirely the ultimate beneficiary, the athlete, who is tasked to win the gold.

Look at the results of the Southeast Asian Games and you’ll know who’s the cause of this debacle.