In Huddle
2 major cage events offered to Mikee Romero
By Beth Celis
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 03:47:00 03/27/2008
MANILA, Philippines—The responsibility of sending a team to the 2008 FIBA Asia Champions Cup in Kuwait and the 30th William Jones Cup in Taipei has fallen on the shoulders of Harbour Centre owner Mikee Romero.
That is after SBP executive director Pato Gregorio revealed that Mikee has already accepted his proposal.
With the PBA unable to represent the country in both events due to conflict in schedule, Pato offered them to Mikee. The Champions Cup is set May 8 to 16 while the Jones Cup will be staged July 10 to 18.
The invitation to represent the Philippines in Kuwait was initially offered to PBA All-Filipino Cup champion Sta. Lucia Realty. And while we are already seeded to the event, Harbour Centre will nevertheless participate in the Seaba qualifier scheduled this April in Jakarta.
Both events allow two imports with unlimited height per team.
According to Pato, there is a possibility that the SBP may be able to tap PBA players coming from teams that fail to qualify for the quarterfinals of the import-laden conference which starts this coming Saturday in Davao.
“This info was relayed to me by PBA executive director Rickie Santos,” Pato said.
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Just got an email from swim coach Susan Papa in Australia where her Fighting Orcas (who represented the Philippines) participated in the recently concluded 2008 Indian Ocean All-Star Challenge.
Susan happily reported that her eight-man age-group contingent is bringing home two gold medals, a silver and a bronze medal from the two-day competition which involved three continents: Australia, Asia and Africa.
Eight-year-old Jamie Tiongson won the two golds plus a silver while 11-year-old Patrick Tiene won the bronze.
“It is an honor for us to win in this highly prestigious swim meet which has actually been running for five years now,” said Susan. She added that the event used to involve only Australia and Asia but expanded this year to include Africa.
The other Fighting Orcas who qualified for the competition were Josef Dos Remedios, Lana Bosch, Jan Karlo Fausto, Serge Davide, Ernestine Tiongson and Rafael Santiago.
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Abe King, chairman of the PBA Legends Foundation USA, also e-mailed from Seattle, Washington where he and his family are based.
Abe said he arrived in Seattle from the two-week grand reunion tour, feeling extremely low. “Para bang kandilang nauupos, nanghihina. Ang feeling ko naulila, nawalan ng kapamilya, ng mahal sa buhay.”
Abe recognized all these as classic symptoms of depression. The low that comes after a two-week high or adrenalin rush brought about by the excitement of the Grand Reunion.
“I know because I’ve felt them before.”
As of the moment, Abe said he is still “in the world of sadness,” sometimes finding himself in tears.
“But don’t worry, I’ll snap out of it before you know it.”
It’s a purely psychological process, according to Abe. Something akin to “post-party blues,” he joked.
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Recently, I received an e-mail from California-based Nat Sagun on a subject that read “Yoyoy Got TSA’d”.
I presumed it was Yoyoy Villamin he was referring to, considering that the cager was in the Legends Tour, but what could TSA mean?
Well I found out in Nat’s e-mail that TSA stands for Transportation Security Administration and that being TSA’d meant going through a haranguing security check—in Yoyoy’s case at the airport where he was taking a flight back to New Jersey.
Nat said Yoyoy was frisked thoroughly. “They found nothing, Yoyoy still managed to smile through it all,” Nat said.
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