GUANGZHOU—Shiela Mae Perez had very little expectations coming into the 16th Asian Games.
Who could blame her?
The country’s national divers received very little support. They trained in frog-infested pools.
Sometimes, there was even no pool to train in, the water having been drained and left empty. And when she text-messaged an official to remedy the situation, all she got was a reply to talk to someone else.
Imagine her surprise then when during diving practice at the Aoti Aquatics Center, fellow competitors and their coaches watched them approvingly.
“They were saying that we were doing a good job,” said the 24-year-old Perez. “I told them that we only started preparing for the Asian Games less than three weeks before we left Manila and they were surprised.”
Perez, the candid face of a diving squad whose members are virtually second-class citizens in the aquatics hierarchy in the country, said she and her teammates could only look wistfully as their counterparts spoke of their training before the Asian Games.
“Some teams had 13 Chinese coaches, some had international training for a long time,” said Perez. “We had less than three weeks and sometimes, there were even frogs in our pool. Sometimes there was no water.”
“Pag kailangan naming ng therapy, minsan pumupunta nalang kami sa bulag na manghihilot.”
It came to a point that Perez—a breadwinner for a family that has seen two fathers walk out on it and a caretaker of sibling who she is seeing through school—became de facto pom-pom girl for a team that was ready to give up its Asiad dreams.
“They’d talk to me and say ‘what are we sacrificing for?” Perez said. “I keep telling them, if you back out, you’re a sure loser. If you go out there and fight, no matter the obstacles, there’s a chance you might win.
“And then I tell them to remember that they are doing this for their country,” she added. “I love my country so much, I don’t care how many problems we have and how many people tell us not to go to the Asian Games anymore. I will represent my country and I will do my best despite everything.”
Perez said that her goal is to simply put on the performance of her life in her pet event, the 3m springboard. And what she lacked in training and support, she and the rest of the dive team hope to make up for here with what she refers to as “the Filipino way.”
“We’ll do what we Filipinos are best at. If we fall, we stand up again.”