THE LAST time I saw him, he was still a small boy, shopping for pastries in a Greenhills bakeshop with his mother.
The next time his existence streamed into my consciousness about a quarter of a century later, he was signing off from the day’s telecast of the NCAA games where he was one of the broadcast panelists.
Has time flown that fast? It didn’t seem too long ago that this broadcaster’s mother, Coney Reyes, and I were rooting for the same Micaa team—Utex—where his father, the late Larry Mumar, was playing.
That was in the early 70’s when Larry and Coney were just newlyweds and their son, Laurence Anthony or LA, wasn’t even born yet.
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If LA had previously been unheard of in basketball circles, then he obviously had not followed in his father’s footsteps. Or, for that matter, his grandfather’s, the legendary Lauro “The Fox” Mumar.
Larry had been an exemplary player both in the amateurs and in the PBA and had donned the national colors many times. But “The Fox,” a contemporary of “The Big Difference” Caloy Loyzaga, is in a class of his own.
LA’s grandfather was a member of the national team to the 1948 London Olympics where we finished 12th. He was also part of the champion Asian Games squad in New Delhi in 1953 and the champion 1954 Manila Asian Games quintet where he was the team captain.
Mumar also played in the 1954 World Championship in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil where the Philippines salvaged a bronze medal—our highest achievement ever in the tournament now known as the Fiba World Cup.
Being a member of such an illustrious basketball family, I figure basketball should be rushing through LA’s veins.
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LA did try out for the Ateneo Blue Eagles where he was accepted in Team A.
“Not because I was good enough to play for the Blue Eagles though, but because at that time, Ateneo was very strict on academics and I was one of the very few who could combine both athletics and academics with success,” LA recalled. “My biggest problem is I am only 5-foot-7. And perhaps I really didn’t have the skills for the game, just a strong, inborn passion for it. In the three years that I played, the Blue Eagles hardly got off the ground. When I was cut by coach Joe Lipa, they soared,” added LA, who played alongside Enrico Villanueva and Wesley Gonzales .
LA holds a degree in Development Studies. He conducts motivational seminars for corporations. He also coaches the Lyceum juniors in the NCAA and does sportscasting on TV5. He is now married and has two kids.