Superliga reboot reset to February

The Philippine Superliga (PSL) on Sunday said it has decided to move its beach volley bubble originally set for later this month to mid-February for the safety of athletes and participants.

Aside from the coronavirus pandemic, PSL chair Philip Ella Juico also cited the string of weather disturbances as one of the reasons to shelve the tournament to be held inside SBMA in Subic.

The PSL Invitational Beach Volleyball Challenge Cup hoped to follow on the PBA bubble in Clark, Pampanga, which restarted pro basketball amid the health crisis.

Yet, despite the COVID-19 scare that disrupted the PBA schedule, Juico said they are confident of the health protocols that it devised five months ago, which has also gotten approval from the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF).

The PBA and the PSL were among the first leagues to have plotted a set of guidelines for resumption and gained IATF green light.

“The PSL games are all outdoors, we have much smaller number of participants (compared to the PBA), and the field of play is only a few meters from the hotels,” said Juico of the tourney originally set for Nov. 28-30.

But the league is also concerned about front-liners assigned to monitor the matches as they may be needed to be deployed to calamity areas.“Taking a conservative and proactive position, Central Luzon, which includes the SBMA industrial zone, may sustain heavy damage to be inflicted by severe weather disturbances (Typhoons Rolly and Siony) within days of each other for the next several weeks,” said Juico.

He said they met with government agencies on Friday and they voiced concerns about handling calamity relief.

“The PSL will step out of the way for the common good. So these agencies can give their full attention to the public emergency Juico said.” INQ