On foreign student-athletes

There is a renewed movement to ban foreign students from becoming varsity athletes in Philippine collegiate leagues. A new bill has been filed in the Lower House, and the NCAA has made its decision on the matter. This partly stems from the largely public perceived monopoly on championships by certain schools with strong foreign basketball athletes, and other issues. Frankly, I would be more concerned with schools that don’t ensure that their varsity athletes actually study and get good grades, but that is a matter for another discussion.

One root question, if we are to be completely honest, is that the schools that haven’t benefited from foreign student-athletes question recruitment. The subtext of the protest is that their rivals recruit foreign student-athletes solely for the purpose of winning championships, whether it be in basketball or other sports. But how do you indict motive? How do you take intent to trial, more so if the athlete or athletes in question find success outside the sporting arena after college? Long-time San Beda team manager Jude Roque posted on social media about the post-varsity successes of Sam Ekwe, Sudan Daniel and Ola Adeogun, foreign athletes who helped the Red Lions win many of their 11 men’s basketball trophies since 2006. Ekwe has his own small business in California, Daniel is in corporate marketing in the Philippines, and Adeogun is taking his MBA post-basketball. So they did complete their studies to become upright, productive citizens.

Another argument is that these bigger, stronger foreign athletes are taking scholarships away from homegrown Filipino athletes. But players from those protesting schools themselves proclaim that they have become better precisely by facing stronger competition and teammates. And as for the scholarships, schools may simply expand their pools. Not to belittle the matter, the issue one scholarship per school team can be easily remedied without a discriminatory ban.

Of course, individual schools are private institutions and can do whatever they want. If they want to ban foreign varsity athletes, that is entirely their prerogative. And if they ban foreign students altogether, they are well within their rights. They can even ban players of a particular race or nationality, if they so desire.

So let’s look at it from the opposite perspective. At any level, depriving a person of opportunities based on race or nationality is discriminatory. In parts of the US, academic scholarships given to Asian students have been either limited or decreased because the foreign students were simply outperforming their American counterparts. And yet, many foreign students at a lot of those colleges and universities are given athletic scholarships and, eventually, citizenship, because they are better at sports which are indigenous to their countries of origin, like Koreans in taekwondo or Japanese in judo.

What if the shoe were on the other foot? Many Filipino athletes who otherwise would not have the resources or financial means would not be able to get a better life for their families overseas. Wesley So is one of the best chess players in the world. Ice skater Michael Novales was similarly recruited for his prowess. They would otherwise have not become recognized as much had they not been allowed to study abroad. And to further stress the point, the vast majority of overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) are required to undergo retraining or advanced study in their countries of deployment before being accepted for work. What if they were prohibited from said studies by virtue of being foreigners? They would have been deprived of the chance to improve their future.

Also, it is worth noting that almost all of the basketball players in question had little or no basketball training at all when they got to the Philippines. They were just great raw material, that’s all. Think about it. For the most part, it was Filipino coaching, Filipino training that made them good athletes. They developed their skills playing against Filipino contemporaries under Filipino coaches. That is actually a testament to Philippine basketball. They became part of the team, family, and part of their school community. 

Sport is natural selection, survival of the fittest. The better team should win, as provided for by league rules. If the leagues themselves decide that – in the age of globalization – they will slam the doors on foreign student-athletes, so be it. But it will not make their athletes better players, or even better people. They’re teaching these young people to change the rules they don’t like, just because someone else may be better than them. Where else will they apply that to other people?

* * * *

“Basurero”, a short film by Fil-American director Eileen Cabiling, will have its world premiere at the 24th Busan International Film Festival. It stars fitness trainer and athlete Althea Vega as the wife of lead character Jericho Rosales, a fisherman who dumps dead bodies in the sea. Vega and Cabiling are in South Korea to promote the film, which is competing in the festival’s Wide Angle section.