The test will be the SEA Games

Going over Inquirer’s  Sports Yearender last Tuesday, you probably concluded that 2014 wasn’t so bad for Philippine athletes.

There were wins on different fronts like those of the dragon boat teams, golfer Princess Superal, the taekwondo jins, skater Michael Christian Martinez and of course, Manny Pacquiao.  Daniel Caluag’s gold medal at the Incheon Asian Games was a glittering triumph, given all that went amiss in that Philippine campaign.

Yes, the year wasn’t so awful.  With all that happened in the boardrooms and offices of bickering and nosy sports officials, it’s a miracle we were able to churn out many successes.  As the Inquirer editorial “Focus on the Athletes” succinctly posed last Saturday: “So where did the frustration come from? From officials, mostly.  If there’s anything that was made apparent in 2014, it’s this: Things are better off when focus is trained solely on the athletes.”

It seems elementary enough to simply sidestep sports leaders and focus solely on the athletes.  But officials, especially the sincere and passionate ones, are indispensable in a country like ours that needs logistics and people to make sports happen.  There are those who are well-intentioned, have their disciplines at heart, spend their own money to send teams and athletes abroad, hire foreign coaches and support the training of national athletes and candidate pools.

Sports leaders are still important.  When international meets take place, sports officials help make the event happen.  It’s never perfect of course given that there are a million and one details to handle when one sends a team abroad or runs an international sports contest.

The problem begins when turf, credit and authority issues emerge and engulf an association. Like so many other public domains, Philippine sports is so obsessed with legacy or who did what and to what effect. There are some who can’t let go of an association because they feel they are the ones who can run it or save the sports they’re in.

When we learn to allow the athletes to be the cynosure of our attention rather than who provided what or did anything, then maybe sports will be different in this nation.

Our sports culture will be tested again when we compete against our Asean neighbors in the forthcoming Southeast Asian Games in Singapore. Many of them have already surpassed us in the overall medal tally on a regular basis.  For example, once lowly Vietnam is already a force to deal with in many sporting fronts.

If we can collectively decide to go all out and check our tendency to play political sports and wholeheartedly support our athletes, then maybe we can overturn the tide and return to the upper tiers of the SEA Games totem pole.  The performance levels of the SEA Games are still a far cry from Asian standards.  But if we can’t even do well in this region, how can we expect to excel in the Asian Games and even the Olympics next year?

The new year has just begun.  Let’s start writing new sports stories with the athletes as the heart of the account.  Let it extend to the coming SEA Games so that when we close the book on 2015 a year from now, we have more golden tales to recount rather than the political sports games we seem to excel in.