The Cebu City Niños march during the opening ceremonies of the 2019 Batang Pinoy National Championships in Puerto Princesa, Palawan. CDN Digital photo | Mars G. Alison
PUERTO PRINCESA, PALAWAN—It’s back to the drawing board for the Cebu City Niños.
This after the team only managed a second-place finish in the recently concluded 2019 Batang Pinoy National Championships here.
“We have to probe deep, together with the commission, how we can improve [the team’s] standing. It’s simply troubleshooting,” said Cebu City Sports Commission (CCSC) chairman Edward Hayco.
“There can be a lot of reasons, and sometimes, more often than not, the solution is so simple sometimes it is just right in front [of us],” he added.
Most of the athletes who represented Cebu City earned their slot to the Batang Pinoy by volunteering in the grassroots sports training program of the CCSC.
Cebu City finished second to Baguio City for the second year but Hayco believes it is a decent achievement, highlighting anew the help of the CCSC’s school for sports program.
“I’m very pleased with being number two because it’s a result of our volunteer and school for sports program,” said Hayco.
Hayco also commended the team’s performance even without its local government unit (LGU) having to spend a huge amount for them.
“Just to be in the top 5 entails a big budget. Some cities I know spends over P100M just to be in top 5. We’re top 2 because of our dedicated coaches and volunteers,” quipped Hayco.
The Niños had a total gold-silver-bronze medal count of 36-34-35 in this year’s Batang Pinoy nationals. Last year in Baguio, it finished with 36-40-44.
Despite having a smaller delegation than last year, Baguio City defended the overall championship title with a total medal haul of 61-45-70. Last year, the host city had a medal count of 83-81-107.
Davao City, which only had a handful of entries last year, this time had the biggest delegation and finished just five gold medals behind Cebu City with a 31-30-41 tally.
Most of the medals of Davao and Baguio came from contact sports with the latter getting 28 medals from taekwondo alone.
Hayco said that as much as they want to focus on contact sports, Cebu lack dedicated coaches.
Some coaches have also blamed Hayco’s volunteerism program as the reason why Cebu City is not able to send its best athletes to the Batang Pinoy.
To be able to represent Cebu City, coaches and athletes must first be able to serve the CCSC’s grassroots program for at least 40 hours.
This has caused the best athletes and their coaches to feel slighted as they allegedly could not volunteer as they themselves are busy with their training.
This, according to coaches, have caused Cebu City’s best to represent other LGUs such as Cebu Province in the Batang Pinoy Visayas Regional Championships last March in Iloilo. Despite that, Cebu City still finished ahead at second overall with a medal count of 42-55-63 while Cebu Province was at third with 38-38-52. Host city Iloilo had taken the overall title with 57-49-44. /bmjo