This school year marks the first time that K-to-12 graduates enter college as 18-year-old freshmen.
Fittingly enough, this school year also marks the 18th year of the Cebu Schools Athletic Foundation Inc. (Cesafi), and at 18, Cebu’s premier school league is open to taking newer and bolder steps.
Among the plans this year is to tap an army of student volunteers to help promote their various school teams in social media, to bring the league closer to the students, a thrust of new Cesafi president Bernard Nicolas Villamor of the Cebu Institute of Techonology-University (CIT-U).
“CIT-U has generously volunteered to take charge of the livestreaming of the opening ceremony and maybe some other games,” said Cesafi commissioner Felix Tiukinhoy. “We are also going to ask for other schools to take charge of the other games since CIT-U can’t cover all of them.”
Aside from the livestreaming of the basketball games, Cesafi also wants student-volunteers from each of the member schools to promote their own teams and games in social media and the board is currently finalizing the plan and guidelines for the move. One idea is to tap the existing school papers of the Cesafi members to take the lead in the promotion.
A stronger presence in social media is expected to help the league gain more mileage, and social media content–produced and written by the students for the students–could also be a boost for the league’s sponsors.
It’s not only in the digital arena that the league wants to get its games closer to the students and fans as it is also planning to transfer the venues of some events to the malls.
“We’re planing to have taekwondo, table tennis, chess and the academic and cultural contests played in Robinsons Galleria, since it is more accessible,” said Tiukinhoy. “We used to hold the games in the schools before and it’s mostly just the players themselves who are also watching, moving them to Galleria will bring them closer to the crowd.”
Cebu is a traditional hotbed for strong players in taekwondo, table tennis and chess but competitions in these events are rarely seen by the public and this latest move by Cesafi could not only get the league closer to the public but the three sports as well.
Holding the academic and cultural contests in crowd-accessible locations will also make the students aware that Cesafi is not just a sports league and that competitions in the academic and cultural events, held usually in the second semester, is sometimes as intense as the sports events.