Can 2 sports plans coexist?
These past weeks, the PSC and POC issued contrasting statements regarding their sports development programs.
Does it mean that the country’s two highest sports agencies are now following different blueprints for sports development in the country?
The PSC announced that a South Korean expert will soon arrive in the country to help in the revival of the Philippine Sports Institute (PSI) .
The South Korean delegation will be headed by Dr. Myung Chun-lee, chief of the Korean Sports Science Institute, which has been developing the Korean athletes since 1990.
The PSC has already earmarked P50 million to acquire equipment which will be used in training grassroots and elite athletes. The budget is included in the P300-million yearly budget of PSI’s operations and programs.
Actually, the PSC has two options in training our elite athletes. It’s either the athletes will be sent to South Korea or an expert will be coming here in the country.
On the other hand, POC President Jose “Peping” Cojuangco announced about a week ago that he plans to adopt a system being used by Brazilian sports science expert Prof. Luis Cameron, who visited the country last November.
Cojuangco said Cameron demonstrated to some of our national coaches and athletes a machine called “sportonomics” used in identifying the metabolic profile and nutrition for an athlete.
According to Cameron the machine vastly helped in improving the performance of Brazilian athletes who competed in Rio Olympics. Cameron is a neurochemist and member of Brazil High Performance Institute.
The POC president said he’s eager to use the system and the program will start when Cameron arrives in the country this February.
Well, let’s see if Cojuangco’s sportonomics program will be able to take off without the approval of the PSC.
PSC Chair Butch Ramirez announced that any program involving grassroots, elite athletes and even sports development will be thoroughly screened by his agency before releasing any funds.
On Jan. 22, the SBP and PBA will jointly announce the Gilas pool of 24 that will be pruned down to 12 before the Seaba Championships in April.
One half of the 24 are rookies chosen in the recent Gilas draft.
Expected shoo-ins among the veterans are GlobalPort’s Terrence Romeo, Alaska’s Calvin Abueva, Phoenix’ JC Intal and Barangay Ginebra’s Japeth Aguilar.
The PBA board has agreed that each team will shell out one player to the national pool.
