Cesafi football
With a different program being utilized by new coach Alex Ballesteros, the University of the Visayas (UV) collegiate football team has so far been one of the top performing teams in the ongoing Cebu Schools Athletic Foundation Inc. (Cesafi) football tournament.
UV, which held on to a scoreless draw against former champion University of San Jose-Recoletos (USJ-R) yesterday at the Cebu City Sports Center, is currently at second place in the team standings with eight points off a 2-2-2 (win-loss-draw) record.
Current leader of the tournament is the defending champion University of San Carlos (USC), which has the same record with UV but has a bigger goal differential.
But UV has already beaten USC earlier in the tournament. It also defeated former champion University of Cebu (UC).
It has ben a big turnaround for UV, considering that it ended last season at the bottom with a 2-2-5 record.
The improvement can be credited to the changes Ballesteros imposed when he replaced Eddie Buot early this year.
“My first objective was to give the team a different program and familiarize the Cesafi’s rules,” said Ballesteros, a former National Team member. “I gave them a different program, which focuses on good ball placing and ball positioning and that’s been the development of the team.”
Ballesteros also stressed the importance of ball handling.
“I also [tell] the team to always train with the ball so that we can be more effective during our games.”
While UV finds itself at the upper part of the standings, Ballesteros is still not contented at this point in the tournament.
“We can’t predict what will happen in the next coming games so we have to go out there and [give] our one hundred percent.” said Ballesteros, who also serves as the head coach of the Warshocks Football squad in Cebu City.
USJ-R is at third place with seven points from a 1-1-3) card followed by UC with six points from a 1-2-3 card. The University of Southern Philippines Foundation (USPF) is at the bottom with a 1-1-2 record.
USC and USPF figured in a 1-1 draw in the first match yesterday.
Erik Gumba scored the first goal for USPF in the 24th minute but Mark Veloso answered for USC with a goal in the 76th minute.