Officials of the Cebu City Niños celebrate their first place finish in the recent Central Visayas Regional Athletic Association meet in Tagbilaran City, Bohol.
cdn photo/glendale rosal
Team Cebu City officials plan to come up with effective training camp as early as next week
Tagbilaran City — They came and they conquered. But little time to celebrate.
Cebu City, as expected, bagged yesterday its 26th overall title in the recently concluded Central Visayas Regional Athletic Association (Cviraa) meet here but the delegation heads of the team immediately went to work in preparation for a bigger task ahead.
Since Cebu City will make up the core of Cviraa or Region 7 team in Palarong Pambansa for its victory in this regional multi-sporting meet, the team’s officials want to come up with an effective training camp as early as next week so athletes can start training for the national sporting meet that will be held in Vigan, Ilocos Sur this April.
“We already had our celebration last night (Thursday) during our thanksgiving dinner at our billeting. Actually, we don’t want to celebrate much about this because our main goal is to recover from our poor performance last year in the Palarong Pambansa,” said Department of Education (DepEd) Cebu City Division sports coordinator Francis Ramirez.
Ramirez said that they will immediately work with the DepEd Region VII officials next week to finalize the unified training for the athletes so that their dismal performance in last year’s Palarong Pambansa in San Jose, Antique won’t happen again.
Region VII had its worst finish in the Palaro when it ended the multisporting meet at ninth place with a 20-18-29 (gold-silver-bronze) tally.
Team officials hope that they can rebound from that performance with the winners of this year’s regional meet dominated by athletes from Cebu City.
The Niños finished with a final medal tally of 114-69-80 after five days of competition.
Bohol Province placed second with a 47-44-71 haul while Lapu-Lapu City surprisingly finished third overall with a 35-31-26 record, thanks to its arnisadors that contributed 23 gold medals.
The returning Dumaguete City, which was part of the Negros Islands that was removed from the Cviraa two years ago, had a great comeback by finishing fourth with a 28-22-28 tally followed by last year’s runner-up Cebu Province, which recorded a 27-54-40 haul.
The Niños capped off the final day with 20 gold medals from badminton team (6), table tennis (3), lawn tennis (2), arnis (1), chess (5), secondary boys basketball (1), secondary girls softball (1), and elementary boys football (1).
Ramirez said he is planning to suggest to the DepEd Region VII to advise the teams, especially those vying in the ball games, to send a solid lineup rather than selecting players from other teams in order not affect the chemistry of the existing roster.