Proud sporting sons of Cabanatuan

CABANATUAN CITY—In celebration of the city’s 62nd founding day, Mayor Jay Vergara presented the Anak ng Cabanatuan award to sons and daughters from different fields who did not have to be native of the city but only had to be linked by family ties or by migration.
It was an honor for me to be the sports journalism awardee at the rites held last Friday at the La Parilla Hotel. The award honors not me entirely but rather, the legacy of my late father and his family who were Cabanatueños.
I was not born in the city but came from a family that had sports as a way of life with the boxing, baseball and basketball events they played in or staged.
My fellow awardees were entrepreneurs Ursula Peñaflor-Fermin and Bart Tubinal; ice cream pioneer Simeona Salita-Puno; educators Malcolm Santos Garma and Dr. Reynato Arimbuyutan; electrical engineering board top-notcher Jan Lou Soteo; actress Kathryn Bernardo; film and TV director Ruel Santos Bayani (once a college student of mine) and BIR lawyer Jetthro Sabriaga.
The sports awardee was taekwondo star John Paul “Japoy” Lizardo.
We had a few moments to talk shop and about our common Cabanatuan roots just before the awards ceremony. Lizardo was not born in Cabanatuan but grew up here.
“Na-alaala ko po ang paglaki ko rito, ang paglalaro naming mga bata (I remember growing up here, playing as a child),” he recalled.
The early street play honed a future athlete as Lizardo would go on to be a swimmer and basketball player at Diliman Preparatory School.
“Malaki po ang role ng father ko sa paglaro ko ng sports (My father played a big role in my getting into sports),” Lizardo related, talking of his father Jovic, whose family hails from Cabanatuan.
When the school’s basketball team was dissolved, Lizardo looked for another sport to challenge him. Having liked Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan movies while growing up, he found taekwondo.
He started doing well in tournaments and pursued the sport in college at De La Salle University. His feats in the UAAP and other meets earned him the Brother John Lynam award as an outstanding La Salle athlete.
Lizardo is a star of a sport with a substantial following among the young and its diehard fans. Interestingly enough, he has dabbled in a bit of show business.
But it is his taekwondo accomplishments that stand out. He has struck gold twice in the Southeast Asian Games in Manila in 2005 and in Jakarta last year plus a bronze in the 2010 Guangzhou Asian Games.
His long-term goal is to make it to the Olympics, hoping that he gets a wild card chance to make it to the London Summer Games this year.
Asked if it was really intimidating to fight Koreans, he said: “Noong una, kasi sport nila yan. Pero noong nag-training na kami sa Korea ay nawala yung takot sa kanila (At first, because taekwondo is their sport. But when we started training there, the fear disappeared.)”
Lizardo hopes that more young people will pick up the sport.
“Marami silang matu-tutunan dito, mga important values (There’s a lot to learn from the sport, like important values),” he explains.
It’s clear that the essentials derived from sport are in Japoy Lizardo and that’s why the city of his roots also saluted him.