THE COMPETING athletes in the upcoming Milo Little Olympics Visayas Regional Finals will be the first to use the sporting equipment that were donated by the Philippine Sports Commission (PSC).
Visayas Regional Finals organizer Ricky Ballesteros said the new sporting equipment used during Cebu’s hosting of the Philippine National Games last May will be utilized in the four-day multisporting meet that will be held in various venues around Cebu City on August 30 to September 2.
“We have new mats for gymnastics, karatedo, taekwondo, and arnis and other new sporting equipment that will surely help make the Milo Little Olympics a success,” said Ballesteros.
The 15 sporting events in the regional meet are arnis, athletics, badminton, basketball, chess, football, gymnastics, karatedo, lawn tennis, scrabble, sepak takraw, swimming, table tennis, taekwondo, and volleyball. He said they might also add pole vault this year.
“We are planning to add pole vault because it’s one of the newest equipment donated by PSC during PNG for Cebu, but it’s still being planned as of the moment. What’s certain is that we have new equipment for athletics,” he added.
More visiting teams
Bacolod City’s Saint John Institute made history last year when it became the first school outside Cebu to top the elementary division. The University of San Carlos-Basic Education (USC-BED) clinched the title in the secondary division.
Because of Saint John’s success last year, more schools from outside Cebu are now interested to join the regional meet.
“There are more interested out-of-town schools to join because they saw how Bacolod performed last year. Our social media pages are flooded with inquiries from interested schools outside Cebu so we expect more athletes and schools from outside Cebu to join the competition,” said Ballesteros.