WITH THE way the City of Naga hosted the recent Central Visayas Regional Athletic Association (CVIRAA) meet, this industrial city could be the future sports tourism hub in the south of Cebu.
The City of Naga showcased its sporting facilities when it hosted the annual multi-sporting meet that featured 13 divisions of Region VII last week.
Among the facilities that the city showed off was its P8-million Teodoro Mendiola Sr. Oval and Sports Field which housed an eight-lane rubberized track oval and an 11-aside football field. It will also include an Olympic-size swimming pool, which is still under construction and expected to be finished late this year.
The city passed with flying colors in its first hosting job and garnered a lot of positive feedback from both the delegates and the officials of DepEd Region VII during the closing ceremonies held at one of the sporting venues, the Enan Chiong Activity Center (ECAC).
One of the advantages of the city is that the sporting venues are near each other. Its covered shell-clay tennis courts is located just beside the pool and the badminton courts while the ECAC is located behind City hall, which is just a few meters from the covered courts.
City of Naga Mayor Val Chiong, who is on his last term, revealed that two barangays in the city will be building their own covered courts that can also be used for different purposes in the future.
“It’s biased to say that we hosted it one-hundred percent successfully but I’m still very glad that we received a lot of compliments from the visiting delegates and a
lot of them were very satisfied with our hosting,” said Chiong. “All the sacrifices and the money the city spent for this meet, I think it’s all worth it.”
Meanwhile, Chiong said they will give cash incentives to gold medalists of the City of Naga.