Time for a Philippine sports conference

LOS ANGELES—The end of summer in the Philippines finds me on the road at the start of the American summer on the way to Honolulu for the 7th Sport and Society Conference at the University of Hawaii in Manoa. 

The conference is an annual gathering of practitioners and scholars to dissect sports issues and concerns like event management and marketing, gender, government participation, college competitions and training.

You pay practically the same amount to fly to Hawaii or the US mainland so I decided to go visit familiar sports and family destinations first before ending this trip with the conference. LA is not really into the NBA playoffs although sports bars and restaurants find hoop fans following the conference finals.

My sense is that there is a bit of California rooting when locals here cheer for the Golden State Warriors.

I will present a paper on the rise of volleyball in the Philippines, its journey from the empty school gymnasiums to its current phenomena as a huge spectator sport.  The way these conferences go is that you send an abstract or summary on the topic you researched on, before it gets screened and accepted (or rejected) by the organizers and you present your results to an audience of fellow researchers and sports personalities.

My sense is that my topic got the nod of the conference because of the impact of volleyball on the Philippine sport scene and how it managed to earn its popularity given the passion Filipinos have for basketball, Manny Pacquiao fights or the billiards exploits of Efren “Bata” Reyes.

Sports conferences, which are numerous across the US and Europe, do not merely focus on the rise and fall of disciplines or teams but also on the many complex concerns that sports impact on.  The academe is given due importance in these gatherings because substantial research is initiated by scholars who assess the value of sports in the formation of societies. 

Practitioners will join university professors in discussing how sports connect to environment care, international differences, community building, leadership issues, migration, nutrition and health care, tourism, corporate sponsorship, race and others.

I will report on the conference in our next column but it’s clear that summits and gatherings of this nature could help foster better understanding of our own complex Philippine sports issues.  One could easily earmark topics like sports leadership, grassroots development, buildings and infrastructure, national team formation, “other” sports coverage for less popular disciplines, indigenous Filipino or Asian games, training, sponsorship solicitation and others. 

We should organize these conferences not to immediately extract solutions but to encourage discussion.  We should keep in check the very personal and political character of Philippine sports to allow discussants and paper presenters to offer alternative solutions based on reliable quantitative or qualitative research.

It’s time to develop some teamwork between all parties concerned.  It’s another Olympic year and it could be a good time to discuss our concerns instead of simply fretting over medal hopes and counts and playing our favorite sport of blaming after subpar or fruitless campaigns.  What’s more, a new political order has just been elected and could include sports in its already complex list of things to do in the next six years.

My hands are already tied for the rest of the year for a conference on popular culture and media but I would be willing to help any one who feels that discussions based on solid research can help start the ball rolling for better sports in the country.