5 Baby Cobras, coach, banned for life; SWU withdraws from Cesafi juniors tourney

WOES CONTINUE

The beleaguered basketball program of Southwestern University (SWU) suffered yet another black eye after the Cebu Schools Athletic Foundation Inc. (Cesafi) banned for life five of its high school players along with its head coach Rey Lubguban for falsification of documents.

Banned players include Elber dela Cerna Catinggan, Reynaldo Obarco Jr., Mark Anthony Quilab, Andy Jones Turno and Edwin Abo-abo.

With this development, SWU athletic director Ryan Aznar relayed to league commissioner Felix Tiukinhoy yesterday that they will be withdrawing their participation from the juniors basketball tournament this season. “We simply don’t have enough players to field a squad,” said the school’s affable official.

According to Tiukinhoy, they have already sent a letter which contained the findings of their investigation to SWU-Phinma chairman Chito Salazar.

The original penalty was supposed to be a five-game suspension for the erring individuals.

However, Tiukinhoy informed Cebu Daily News that the members of the Board of Trustees got so incensed with the actuations of those involved that they decided to implement the harshest sanction in the book: a lifetime ban.

Last Monday, Tiukinhoy along with the rest of his deputy commissioners conducted the investigation on the documents that the school submitted for screening. The inconsistencies in the records were eventually confirmed after the players admitted that they were indeed tampered with.

Tiukinhoy said that several more players might still be given the same punishments after they were done with the investigations.

This is only the second time in league history that the gravest of punishments was given. Interestingly, the first time also involved SWU after former star Eliud Poligrates was found guilty of “gross dishonesty: after the latter lied about his participation in another tournament while the Cesafi competition was still ongoing back in 2009.