Juico calls for ‘fun’ sports for kids

FORMER Philippine Sports Commission chair Philip Ella Juico delivered the opening speech of the Philta-Toby’s Juniors Age-Group Tennis Challenge recently at the Rizal Memorial Tennis Complex, calling on organizers to promote fun and lessen the stress and pressure in youth sports.

“The principle that sports for children and youth are organized so that they can play as much as they can the sport of their choice in an organized and safety-oriented way,” Juico said.

The former Agrarian secretary of the late former President Corazon C. Aquino said that in taking up sports, children and youth should learn skills and imbibe values that they can use and practice for the rest of their lives.

Echoing a similar theme in a recent interview with a television show, Juico called on the country’s sports and education authorities to consider reformatting and redirecting the youth’s Pambansang Palaro so that the annual student games can help promote the attainment of the objectives of the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDG) Task Force on sports, which called on all nations to use sports in its broader context in promoting health, education, peace, social development, rather than for just discovering society’s next sports heroes.

In the same interview, Juico stressed that had the Philippine Institute of Sports (Philsports), which he established during his term as PSC chair in 1996, had been seriously pursued by his successors, the Philippines would probably have by now a strong nationwide coaching pool for elite sports.