MVP to establish 'Center for Sports Excellence' in Antipolo

The First Pacific sports hub is envisioned to provide athletes aspiring to be like the country’s first Olympic gold medalist, Hidilyn Diaz, with a dedicated learning and training hub so close to home.

MANILA, Philippines – Recognizing the need to nurture future Hidilyn Diazes, business tycoon and sports patron Manuel V. Pangilinan is setting up a Center for Sports Excellence at the First Pacific Leadership Academy in Antipolo City.

“We need a Center for Sports Excellence in this country and we’re thinking, actually we’ve already drawn up plans converting the First Pacific Leadership Academy — it’s about a 15-hectare property in Antipolo — into a sports center,” Pangilinan said on One News’ “The Chiefs.”

“It already has the hotel facilities there, rooms, and then space to build badminton courts, boxing gyms, basketball courts. And we’ll have sports psychologists, trainers, coaches living there as well, so it will be effectively a National Sports Center,” Pangilinan added.

The First Pacific sports hub is envisioned to provide athletes aspiring to be like the country’s first Olympic gold medalist, Hidilyn Diaz, with a dedicated learning and training hub so close to home.

“We don’t want them to be far away from schools. We want these youth to continue with their studies,” Pangilinan, who chairs the MVP Sports Foundation, said.

MVPSF board of trustee and boxing association president Ricky Vargas said the new sports center would help athletes’ development in a big way.

“Ang problema natin, wala tayong (Our problem is we have no) Centers of Excellence, that’s why you have to send them out to other countries, where they can really focus, learn, get not only mental strength (but) toughness,” Vargas said.

“We don’t have that here and there are many Filipinos who are professionals in nutrition, sports psychologists, kinetics and all that. If we can get that to his (Pangilinan’s) vision in the First Pacific Leadership Academy, that’s a start,” Vargas, former president of the Philippine Olympic Committee, added.

“Maybe (in) two Olympic cycles, andun na tayo (we’ll get there).”

After the golden breakthrough and record one-gold, two-silver, one-bronze medal harvest in the Tokyo Games, MVP sees more private sector support for the Filipino athletes.

“Scale of support will likely escalate and so what we have to think about, I think, we should open up,” said MVP, who is spearheading the formation of the Philippine Business for Sports Development (PBSD) to strengthen private sector support for Filipino athletes.

“We should have a Philippine Business for Sports Development, invite major companies, sponsors, that might be willing to support,” he added.

The PBSD is the sports version of the corporate-led Philippine Business for Social Progress (PBSP) and the private sector-led Philippine Disaster Relief Foundation for social development and disaster management, respectively.

“If we can execute that and get people like a group of 10, a group of eight, a group of six to start this PBSD, wow, then you’re looking at help for the elite athletes and their training, as well as the grassroots,” Vargas said.

The challenge, according to Pangilinan, is for the athletes to give the private sector support a return on investment.

“This is a collective effort — the athletes must perform better because we can only go so far in terms of support,” he said.

“We’re enablers only but the guy who lifts the weights, the guy who goes to the boxing ring, the guys who go to the basketball court, they must perform because sila na iyon, wala na kami magagawa (that’s on them, we can only do so much). So they must perform better and they must win because it generates its own virtuous cycle,” he added.