Cebu City hounds host Leyte for overall title

TACLOBAN CITY—Cebu City found the martial arts events of arnis, karatedo and taekwondo rich medal sources aside from chess yesterday and emerged a threat to overall leader and host Leyte Sports Academy-Smart with a day left  in the POC-PSC Batang Pinoy 2012 Visayas leg here.

The Cebuanos suddenly asserted their might in the week-long meet for athletes 15 years old and younger by amassing 25 gold medals in the four sports alone to move up to second overall with a total of 33 gold medals on top of 26 silvers and 30 bronzes.

LSA-Smart stayed on top with a gold-silver-bronze haul of 38-26-24 with 32 of its victories coming from track and field.

Bacolod City (32-22-20) dropped to third and Negros Occidental slid to fourth (28-13-13) in the medal race after dominating swimming earlier.

Cebu City captured seven golds each in arnis and taekwondo and picked up six more in chess and five in  karatedo.

Ma. Carmela Coran ignited Cebu City’s assault in taekwondo after beating Tacloban City’s Maureen Grace Limchaypo for the junior women’s bantamweight gold at the Leyte Normal University Gym.

Also taking golds were Aila Marie Lepon in lightweight, Micah Marie Mission in welterweight, Marie Hans Therese Espina in middleweight, Sal Luiji Estrada in junior men finweight, Kylle Jhon Flores in featherweight and Yutaka Toyoda in lightweight.

The arnis winners for Cebu City include Mika Grava in girls’ pinweight full contact, Ronilo Lumantad in boys’ flyweight, James Indig in boys’ bantamweight and Luke Placyd Galon in boys’ lightweight.

Scoring in karatedo for Cebu City were Clark Anthony Raganas in boys’ novice kata,  Ma. Arcien Verder in advanced -39kg girls’ kata, Jesah Mae Ann Bacus in advanced -50kg girls’ kata and Jeremiah Bullo in boys’ advanced +53kg and Joshua Philip Salvador.

Mandaue City and Lapu Lapu City each came away with three victories in karatedo held at the Dep-Ed Regional Office Gym.

Over at Governors Hall, Cebu City’s woodpushers struck through Felix Shaun Balbona, Rhenzi Kyle Sevillano and Glexan Derotas who captured the boys’ team standard, blitz and rapid gold medals. Keithclaire Morala ruled the girls’ blitz, Vic Glysen Derotas the girls’ rapid, and Sevilano the  boys’ standard individual golds.

Jan Godfrey Seno also contributed to Cebu City’s cache by taking the boys’ singles crown in lawn tennis at Tacloban Tennis Club. He later teamed up with Christopher Encarnacion to claim the boys’ doubles gold.