Beauty queen and triathlete Katherine Jumapao rides her bike during one of her triathlon competitions. | Contributed Photo
CEBU CITY, Philippines — Cebuana triathlete and beauty queen Katherine Jumapao is on a mission to develop a grassroots development program in sports in her hometown in Lilo-an, north Cebu.
True to her mission, the 29-year-old Jumapao, who won the Miss AAA Renaissance Cebuana 2018, officially formed the Move Lilo-an, a sports and fitness advocate group that aims to develop the youth into sports.
“Our ultimate goal is to mold a grassroots program, develop athletes in Lilo-an and make them competitive in the future. We’re looking to develop and make them compete in different sports either locally or in the national level,” said Jumapao, who has a vast athletic background.
In her younger years, Jumapao played for the University of San Carlos (USC) Lady Warriors’ basketball and volleyball teams and slowly transitioned to the grueling sport of triathlon.
Just last year, in the middle of the pandemic, Jumapao decided to realize her promise after winning the Miss AAA Renaissance Cebuana 2018 to develop a sports program for the youth.
Thus, the Move Lilo-an was formed.
“This is an overdue project of mine as a titlist in the Miss AAA Renaissance Cebuana,” said Jumapao.
“Move Lilo-an was formed in June last year in the midst of the pandemic. Our main objective is to become an advocate for fitness and health, which is very crucial during this time of the pandemic,” said Jumapao, who also played for Lilo-an in the Gov’s Cup volleyball tournament.
“During that time last year, we’re only limited to online sessions. We catered home workouts and provided tips to people on how to stay fit and healthy while at home until we’re allowed to go outside. That’s where we’re able to fully implement our sports program that is focused on cycling and running. Also, we’ve supported Purok-based volleyball friendly matches in Lilo-an,” said Jumapao.
Move Lilo-an grew bigger when Cebu started to ease down the restrictions of the health and safety protocols.
Katherine Jumapao (sixth from left) is joined by her team from Move Lilo-an during the World Bicycle Day event at the SM Seaside City Cebu.
Jumapao’s group is also aggressively organizing sports events one after another. They already staged five sporting events mainly focused on cycling in Lilo-an.
They also provided sponsorship and other forms of support to different sports events in the fifth district of Cebu.
Currently, Move Lilo-an has a training pool of 30 athletes, whose ages are 15 to 25 years old, who are being developed into elite competitors either in cycling, duathlon, running, or triathlon.
According to Jumapao, they are training these athletes for free with the hopes of discovering talents that can represent her hometown in the future.
Move Lilo-an has several competitive and non-competitive sports events lined up for the rest of the year. Most of their events are held at their headquarters in Move Park Lilo-an, a popular food park destination in north Cebu.
“North Cebu is known for cycling and volleyball. We’re very glad that Move Lilo-an already gathered many support after it was formed last year,” she added.
Most of the group’s scheduled events are announced on their Facebook page, Move Lilo-an, so as their workout and training videos.
/dbs
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