CCSC’s School for Sports program helps improve performance of public school athletes
Two years ago, Cebu City Sports Commission (CCSC) Chairman Edward Hayco and Cebu City councilor Joy Augustus Young had a mission to establish a free training program in public schools in Cebu City.
Now, that plan is working wonders for Cebu City’s athletes.
Since the “School For Sports” program officially got going in 2017 with only two pilot schools, it has still managed to put up good numbers as seen in the increase of the medals won by the public school athletes in the recently concluded 28th Cebu City Olympics.
Hayco said that public school athletes this year won more gold medals compared to last year.
He pointed out that they won eight gold medals in the gymnastics alone compared to none last year.
They also hauled 24 gold medals in athletics compared to seven last year.
And in swimming, where it had no golds last year, they managed to win 15 this year.
According to Hayco, the data that they gathered is proof that the program is working as expected.
Remarkably, all the athletes that won the gold medals are beneficiaries of the free training program of their “School For Sports” program.
“I am just very happy to see the program’s effectiveness in multi-sporting meets. We are expecting our athletes to improve well in the coming years because of our dedicated coaches. This just shows that public school athletes can also excel aside from athletes in private schools,” said Hayco.
Unit 1 topped the overall medal tally in the elementary division by collecting 25 gold medals, 22 silvers, and 23 bronzes, edging erstwhile champion Unit 5, which had a 25-16-21 (gold-silver-bronze) tally. University of Cebu (UC), which competed as a stand-alone school for the first time, finished third with a 23-12-6 haul.
Unit 1 is composed of schools from Tisa Elementary School, Punta Princesa Elementary School, and Basak Community Elementary School.
Unit 5 is composed of schools from Cebu City Central School, Zapatera Elementary School, and Tejero Elementary School.
There are 50 coaches that CCSC hired to train public school athletes in their program.
They are now covering nine strategically chosen public schools in Cebu City’s urban area while five schools in the mountain barangays.
They already trained 9,000 kids and this progress continues to rise.
Disclaimer: The comments uploaded on this site do not necessarily represent or reflect the views of management and owner of Cebudailynews. We reserve the right to exclude comments that we deem to be inconsistent with our editorial standards.
