San Miguel, Blackwater suspend practices amid Covid-19

MANILA, Philippines—San Miguel and Blackwater decided to momentarily suspend its practices amid the spread of Covid-19 in the Philippines.

Beermen head coach Leo Austria said his team won’t have training sessions until “next week” while Elite alternate governor Ariel Vanguardia said his club suspended its day-to-day activities until the weekend.

“When the PBA announced that the games would be suspended yesterday we were still holding practice and today we still had our usual run but we saw that the players were greatly affected by the news, we decided to cancel it entirely,” said Austria in Filipino Thursday.

As for Blackwater, Vanguardia said they’d have a three-day break starting Friday.

“We practiced until today and we’ll see what happens over the weekend.”

San Miguel played in the opening of the Philippine Cup with a 94-78 win over Magnolia and it seems that will be the conference’s lone game until the PBA decides to resume its games.

The league’s decision to suspend the games, however, is set indefinitely.

Austria added that the team would monitor the situation and their decision to suspend their own practices was for the safety of the players.

“This is also for our own safety and we’ll see what we’ll do next week,” said Austria, who has led San Miguel to five straight Philippine Cups.