Frustration fluttered over local sports in 2011

SACRAMENTO—Here’s a look back at a year to remember or forget in Philippine sports.

Manny Pacquiao cheated defeat at the hands of his Mexican doppelganger. Nonito Donaire Jr. notched a hollow victory over a tango star.

The Smart Gilas team died a quixotic death in China. The roller coaster Azkals continued to hurtle
toward their next unpredictable stop.

After Olympic qualifying tournaments staged in 2011, only one
Filipino athlete so far has earned a ticket to the London Olympics. Our battalion hobbled home from the SEA Games—another debacle, another wake-up call for the national sports associations (NSA).

A banner year it wasn’t. But 2011 also blessed us with winners.

Renegade dragon boaters hauled more gold than a Grasberg miner during an international tournament in Tampa. The team flew to Florida after scraping for funds denied them by the state’s sports agency for bolting their NSA.

Also in August, a Philippine
softball team lost the championship game to the local squad in the girls’ little league world series. But the under-funded softbelles, whose trip to Michigan was rescued by an
Inquirer story, were hailed as
champions just the same, especially by their gracious host—the Filipino-American community of Kalamazoo in the Wolverine State.

Fisherman-turned-cue artist Dennis Orcollo snagged his sport’s biggest catches—the World 8-Ball crown
in February and the 10-Ball world
trophy in September.

Juvic Pagunsan won the Asian Tour Order of Merit for a sterling stint on the region’s golf circuit—
proving once again that the Pinoy athlete can excel where heft and height are not required.

Pacquiao’s November fight with ring double Juan Manuel Marquez went the distance at the MGM Grand Arena in Las Vegas. Despite Manny’s slim win, he is still the face of boxing, its premiere marquee
attraction. Pacquiao may not face Floyd Mayweather Jr. next year since Floyd goes to jail soon for well-publicized misdemeanor charges.

Pacquiao wannabe Donaire came out swinging against Argentina’s Omar Narvaez in New York’s
Madison Square Garden in October. But Narvaez tangoed the night away from a frustrated Donaire
—soon to box in the super
bantamweight class where his true worth will be tested.

A fourth-place finish at the Asian championship won by the hosts in Wuhan in September ended the Smart Gilas basketball team’s near-impossible dream of landing an Olympic berth. Inquiring minds want to know if the fancied team under a fancied mentor is worthy of the blank check support from its godfather.

Light flyweight Mark Anthony Barriga is the country’s only athlete truly bound for London, via a technicality at the Baku world box-offs in September. If other hopefuls don’t make it through the remaining Asian and world championships, qualifiers or the Olympics place quota system, we face the specter of sending more officials than athletes to London this July.

The Azkals woke up football with exploits in the AFC Cup. They reached the qualifying matches for the World Cup, but a constantly
mutating makeup finally took its toll. Hope springs eternal for a team sport best suited to the Pinoy
psyche and physique. Before the year ended, the Azkals basked in a friendly match at home with soccer superstar David Beckham and the LA Galaxy.

Our sixth place finish in the SEA Games in Indonesia in November created a ripple effect that could lead to a shakeup atop the food chain of local sports.

But the guard is not likely to change soon in the NSAs controlled by an old-boys’ network. In 2012, a war will be waged by a new generation of sports leaders against a cabal unwilling to be kicked out of the door.